


The Undecidability of the Continuum

by bistourylove



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Blow Jobs, Cunnilingus, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Girl with a gun, Guns, Hand to Hand Combat, Homophobic Language, Knives, Loss of Virginity, M/F, M/M, Memoir, Murder, Origin Story, POV First Person, Sex, Smut, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Violence, filching, m/m - Freeform, non-canon, non-con, obviously Moran is good with a gun, teen!mormor, violence kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-02-20 01:45:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 39,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2410436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bistourylove/pseuds/bistourylove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Sebine Moran and how loving Jim changed her life forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Can you see the stars if the sun is in your eyes?

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of Original characterisation, a bit of an origin story. No beta, so I apologise if there are mistakes - if you let me know about them I will fix them.  
> This is the first of several chapters so I'd appreciate it if you kept reading- it gets more complicated and darker along the way.  
> New chapters will be posted every Sunday!  
> Sorry no smut this chapter. Thanks for reading.

There once was a man who wasn’t a man at all. Some say he was a spider, but I know better and no one will ever know better than I. He was a magpie, loved all the shiny things he came across, if only to shatter them. And let me tell you, when I was young I was bright and he shattered me into more pieces than there are grains of sand. If people like you and I are rational numbers than he was a real number and there exists an infinite amount of space between him and the rest of us, and actually no space at all. This is the story of when I lived the space between, with him. 

His name was James, James Moriarty. The son of a town drunk and his mistress, not that he ever knew his mother. An odd thing that, maybe he is the way he is because he didn't have a mammy to tuck him in at night the way most little boys do. And if love were something you learnt early on then he missed the lesson and learnt possession instead on the night his mum overdosed on their kitchen floor.His father was a gruff man, you'd never believe that they were related. Jim, as everyone called him, was class, his father was crass and never did the two see eye to eye. It was only when Jim found his father's pistol and threatened him in the dead of night did the beatings stop. 

Jim knows the power of fear is stronger than anything else: fear is the heart of love, the spirit of motivation, the blood the world pumps to keep alive.

When we met, I knew who he was. In Leixlip it was impossible not to have heard the stories, especially since we attended the same school. Of all the places, I met him in a bookshop, you know the one, right off Páire Mhuire with all the antique leather hardbacks.We were both in our uniforms. I remember my pinafore had a tear in it, I'd gotten snagged on my bike chain that morning but was in too big a hurry to pick up my special order of The Wasp Factory to go home a change after classes. His tie was off and his jacket was out of sorts, the knees of his khakis were sullied with mud. Poor thing was bleeding from a split lip.Well, I say poor thing, that was my first impression. After knowing him for as long as I have, you'd understand how that impression has changed. I asked him if he was okay, hiding out here in the military histories to avoid Tom McGahn again. 

"Feck off, you just going to go and tell him aren't you? Dumb girl" he spat at me  
"If you ask me, Tom could use a split lip himself. I can walk you home after I get my book"  
"I don't need a girl to watch out for me. " he said, mentioning my gender like a slur  
"Well, you need someone. God knows your Da is not going to do it" I quipped chidingly  
"Besides I'm older than the lot of you, and I've never lost a fight, which is more than some can say." I reminded him as I brushed away his fringe and met his eyes  
"You’re only a year above us"  
"And the year makes a difference James"

He regarded me for a moment, unsure if I were a threat or an asset before saying  
"I'd rather not go home, if you don’t mind"  
"No problem, my parents are in London for the weekend, you can kip on my couch til they get back"  
"Looking to start rumors then eh?"  
"Let 'em talk, now, have you seen Mr.Mcnaughton? I really want my order."

As we were leaving the shop Jim looked on edge, I wouldn't say nervous, just with heightened senses about him. It was only in little things, the way his fingers tapped at his side, the quick glances in every direction. No one could ever say of him, that he was not a survivalist. 

“Frank’s a girl” he says out of no where  
“Sorry, what?”  
“In your book, in the end Frank is actually a girl.”  
“Ah, thanks for trying to ruin it for me, but I’ll read it anyway.”  
“Why?”  
“Because it’s not the ending that matters it’s the events that lead up to it.”

We were silent on the walk back to my family’s cottage, the only sound the clicking of my bike chain as I pushed it along, we could do no more than share a cigarette, refuse to make eye contact. I couldn't help but steal sideways glances at him, his face was angular but his lips were so plump, I was unable to decide if that was from bruising or birth. I wanted to know what they tasted like with my tobacco on them. 

When we reached my front door he kept looking around, I think he assumed it was a trap until I got inside, threw down my rucksack, doffed my pinafore and sprawled out on the couch in my school shirt and bicycle shorts. He snorted, laughing at me.  
“You’re so boyish, bet you’ll never find a husband.”  
“Yeah and who said I wanted one?”  
We stared at each other for too long but, I don’t remember it being uncomfortable. I do remember feeling that electricity you get when you’re alone for the first time with someone new, I never feel that anymore, but, things were always different with Jim.  
“Tea?” he asks and I wonder when was the last time he sat down and had a proper meal. The more I looked at him the more gaunt he really was. His skin was pale and sallow under his beetle eyes, and I had never seen a boy look more vulnerable and beautiful than he looked to me then.  
“Yeah, sarnies alright?” I've never been domestic, but making a few sandwiches among new friends doesn't change that. Being nice isn't a bad thing, right? Well, actually it is, but I hadn't learnt that yet.  
“Sure, I can make them if you want.”  
“You would?” I asked a bit bewildered  
“Least I can do right?”  
“S’ppose”  
He started rifling through my parent’s shelves, the larder, the pantry, like he was on the hunt for something and I just laid out on the couch. I’d never had a boy do anything for me, never had a boy really. I remember thinking that it was nice, domestic, that maybe I’d want a husband if he’d be like this. It was a silly thought, the kind of thing you have when you’re that young and naive. 

He set down the hot sandwiches, pear and cheese with golden syrup and crisps on the side, he looked very proud of himself in that moment, presenting me with my meal - an ear to ear grin on his face. He shuffled back to the kitchen for our drinks, I had assumed tea, or water, but he came back to the sitting room with two bottles of O’Haras. I didn't like beer then, I don’t like beer now, but I drank it and I sat beside him on the couch and I liked that just fine. Midway through the meal, we were laughing about something and being boisterous, I can’t remember what now, but he made this huge gesticulation and knocked his stout off the coffee table. I had never seen anything like it before, the animalistic way he curled up on instinct, the instant flinch he had before he dashed to the carpet to pick up the bottle. He had fear in his eyes and without saying anything I knew why - his father. 

“It’s alright, really, this rug is ages old, no one will notice a new stain.” I said, I wanted to pat him on the back but I knew trying to touch him was not going to help.  
I went to the kitchen, got a flannel and dabbed up what I could, what wasn't soaked into the carpet already. He still seemed distraught, I brought him another beer and handed him a cigarette.  
“We can’t smoke in here, but the roof is lovely and the sun is setting.”  
I can think of no more innocent memory with him than of that sunset. Then we were carefree, he was away from his old man, on a full stomach; I was next to the one mysterious boy in that whole godforsaken town and he didn’t mind my spiced tobacco. We were both a little buzzed from the three bottles we’d gone through each and it made everything around me seem better, if only for the moment.Over the years Jim and I have shared our fair number of sunsets, after the work is over and he’s exhausted of the game. But I didn't know then that I would ever have another one with him, and so, in that moment I captured a mental photograph of him to cherish. He has always had those dark brown eyes that seem black to most people, and the thickest hair I’ve ever seen, he’s always been given to be overly expressive with his facial features, moving eyebrows as if they weren’t attached to his skin at all, and stretching his mouth into weird poses as he speaks. And when he was young, Jim positively glowed. Despite the insecurity, despite the bloodied lip, on that rooftop I thought for sure he was the sun, no one could have changed my mind. No one ever will. 

It was awkward, once we’d gone through all the beers in the larder. We both knew that any other girl and boy would have been all over each other, dumb and full of lust. We both knew we weren’t those people. 

“You don’t have to sleep on the couch.”  
“Day room then?”  
“Uh, yeah, we’ve got one, I was going to say you could sleep in mine if you wanted, long as you keep you hands to yourself.”  
“I think the day room’s a better idea, considering.”

That was it, I had been staring at him all afternoon, wondering if he was staring back when I wasn't. In one simple sentence he had given me the reassurance I wasn’t ever going to ask for. And, it was stupid, infatuation, but, my heart swelled. Maybe I knew, probably I didn’t, one day he'd be my all.

We went our separate ways down the hall after I handed him a pair of my track bottoms and an old band t-shirt. I was taller than him then, now we’re about even, in height at any rate, he was a motley sight in my pyjamas. He shut his door, I never shut mine, left it open to hear everything around me, to allow our finicky cat in and onto my bed if she ever felt like it.  
I’m glad I did, or maybe our lives wouldn’t have gone the way they did, maybe I shouldn’t be glad for that. But, I am and I won’t start apologising now.  
I woke up with a start, I couldn’t identify the sound that startled me, or where it was coming from. I didn’t know where I was for a second and then it all came back to me. Jim, Jim was in my house, the noise must be Jim. I darted down the hall, didn’t care that I had no bottoms on, something sounded direly wrong. 

And it was.

When I got the door open, the locks were old and not hard to push through, Jim seemed possessed. He was flailing across the mattress, bed clothes ensnaring him as he moved, and the cries. I’ve never heard worse sobs, which is saying a lot considering what I’ve done with my life since. He was screaming something, words I couldn’t understand, I didn’t speak Gaelic then. I’ll still never know what it was he was saying, he never did tell me. I pinned him down on his back, my knees on his arms, his face between my hands and yelled his name. I shook him. I tried all I could and then finally I smacked him hard twice and he came to.  
He came to with tears in his eyes and then fear when he realised what had happened. 

“It’s okay, it’s me.” I said and he was still looking through me like I wasn't there, like I wasn't the girl who walked him back to her place.  
“Jim, Jim, look at me, it’s Sebine, it’s Moran, JIM!”  
Something inside him snapped, he came back to reality and then the tears actually started flowing. I asked him to tell me what his nightmare was about and all he said that it couldn’t be a nightmare if it were real. I let him up and he tucked his knees to his chest, rocking, face down, full of shame, for what I did not know. 

“I just feel so small.” he simpered, sniffing tears up his nose and making a disgusted face.  
I tucked him into myself, ran my hand over his tousled, sweat soaked hair  
“Rub your eyes real hard Jim.”  
“What?” at least he had looked up at me  
“Just do it.”  
“Fine” he ground the base of his palms against his moist face, rubbing back and forth the way you do when you just wake up or are beyond lethargic and cannot sleep.  
“You see all the little stars behind your eyelids?”  
“I suppose.” his voice was still gravely from crying but the lilt was returning.  
“That’s because you’ve got a whole universe inside you,” I lifted his chin with my forefinger, tilting him toward me gently “so don’t let this world let you down Jim.”

He had no reply, just blinked at me and tried to rearrange his face. When I got up to leave back to my own bed he caught my wrist and asked me to stay. I did.  
It’s not how most people would imagine the first time Jim and I slept together. Because most people don’t understand Jim was a boy once. Moriarty was a child, I know it seems impossible. Monsters don’t grow up, spiders are spiders when they escape from the egg and go out into the world. But Jim isn’t a monster, people just believe he is and that’s what counts. The first time we slept together we actually slept, there were no gnashing teeth on sensitive skin, no slick hands on hips or guttural moans. That would come later. We slept, and I held him, that fragile bruised frame, breathed him in, learnt the resting rate of his heart, unsteady but strong, held him ‘til morning dawn woke us too early.


	2. Knight in Shining Armour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebine said she's never lost a fight, and well...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short chapter - more to come soon.  
> Thanks for reading
> 
> Warnings: homophobic language, violence, references to rape

The next day passed easily, neither of us mentioned what took place the previous night. We weren't really skirting around the subject, it was just understood,like we had lived together for years and night terrors occasionally came with the companionship. He didn't mind if I sat and read, too enwrapt in my own activities to be a proper host; because he sat and read too. He loved my father’s empire chair, I had always felt it was too stiff and stuffy, he said it made him feel regal. I get that now.  
While I was a fast reader, going through a hundred and fifty pages an hour, I found that he somehow surpassed my skill. It was endearing, seeing this side of him. He was an awful student, never did any of his work, goaded the faculty to their wits end, but actually he was, is, the smartest person I had ever, have ever, had the chance to know. I found that his knowledge extended from literature into history, that he could tell you just why he so loved the strategy of the Red Eyebrows Rebellion as easily as he could discuss Lebensraum and follow it all by poetic recitation of the lesser known works of John Donne. He spent an exorbitant amount of time studying maths for fun, that I've never understood. For a boy from the poor side of the village, he was more erudite than all those Dublin schoolboys I had secretly fawned over just because they went to Blackrock College. 

***

“Won’t your father notice you've been gone since Friday?” I asked him Saturday night while we’re walking up to Ryevale Tavern - they never really ask your age if you’ve got money in your pocket.  
“Oh, I’m sure he’s positively seething. I’ll have to answer to that when I go back.” it starts as a joke and trails off as an actuality.  
“I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”  
“I would be looking forward to it no matter what I had done. At least right now I’m enjoying myself for a change.” He took my hand as he said it, it was casual,confidence was new and it suited him.  
“And I.” We swung our hands like a pendulum, hoping it would somehow control time.  
We sat at a booth in the back, didn’t want to draw attention, didn’t want to be distracted. I told him drinks were on me, didn’t want to have him feeling awkward about the money situation, told him I had a tab anyway, I was lying but not in a way that's wrong. It’s not like I came from wealth, my family certainly had more than his household, I just didn’t want to bring that up.  
He said it wasn’t proper for a girl to pay on dates, and I told him that I’d remember that if I ever went on one. We were in the middle of our second pints when things changed and after would never be the same again. 

Tom McGahn and his boys came in, each of them with a girl on their arm, each but Tom. Jim turned his back and his posture shrunk, I could tell he wanted to go unnoticed. For a moment neither of us said anything, just shared glances between each other and the bar. Communicating silently that Jim wanted to leave, but there was only one door, we could stay ‘til they left, but that was a gamble. I could see the frustration in his eyes, could tell that he was so tired of going from home to school only to be swapping bullies. I put my right hand over his left and touched my nose to his, gave him a faint smile. We were going to sit, very still and hope they sodded off. That was the plan, but you know how well plans go when you’re a teenager. 

“Aww isn’t that a sight, look at this faggot, thinks he’s goin’a try and blend in an’ take a girl out.” Tom’s voice was like game show host, and it grated me.  
His group of flunkies had followed him over, but their girls stayed at the bar, this wasn’t their business, their business was looking pretty and giving face. The group of miscreants stood over us, Tom with his arms folded in front of him, he tilted his chin up like a challenge.  
“I, Tom, I…” Jim started and he was a whole different boy, he’d lost that loquaciousness I knew he had within him. And I wasn’t going to stand for it.  
“Seems the only one here without a girl is you Tom, now what am I to conclude from that?”  
I used all the scathing eloquence in my voice I had picked up from years of practice. Took a pull of my pint and set it down coolly, raised my eyebrow, waited for a response.  
Tom pulled up a chair, sat too close to me, put his hand on my knee.  
“Well, love, that’s cos I came for you. I’m here to show you what a real man is.” he gave my knee a squeeze.  
I remember thinking that this was going to be good, it’s so much easier to hurt them when they’re this dumb, almost makes you feel sorry for them, almost. So I leaned in, real close to his face, licked my lips and stared down at his mouth.  
“Oh yeah? I bet you’re a real beast in bed eh? Bet you can go for hours, maybe even days.”  
Jim shrank at my flirting, he looked as though he wanted to disappear, as though he hoped the pits of Hell would open beneath him so he could be swallowed up. He didn’t know what I was doing, but I couldn’t exactly tell him if this was going to work.  
“You know it darling, what’s your name again?”  
“Sebine”  
“Well Sebine, today is your lucky day, I’m going to show you the best time of your life.”  
“You think so do you?”  
By this time I’m talking to him so close I bet he could feel my breath on the shell of his ear, I let our cheeks touch and his hand slides up my thigh, his gang all make impressed noises in the background and Jim looks away, unable to watch what he thinks is going to be another embarrassment to his masculinity.  
“I know so Sebine, I know so.” he leaned in for a kiss just as I pulled back  
“Ya know what I know?” I said playing coy  
“What’s that?”  
“I know you toss off to your sister before you go to bed every night, I’ve seen the way you look at her and it’s just not right Tommy. Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk.” And then I started laughing, head back and I’m sure I looked out of control.  
“The fuck are you on about?” he almost shouted, stood up as though he were affronted.  
Jim is finally smiling again but trying to hide it, and all Tom’s boys are looking at each other like there might be some truth to what I just said, it didn’t matter if it were true or not. What mattered was that I planted that seed in all their minds. It’s about control.  
Tom made the stupid decision then, to attempt hitting me, and that did not end well for him. I had his wrist in my hand and his face on the table before he could realise what was going on. His boys were silent, I don’t think they’d ever seen him bested and certainly not by a girl.  
“Now, I’m going to take my man Jim here and go home. And I’m going to ride that thick cock of his while you’re busy getting stitches. And if I see you bother him again, I won’t be so kind.” I let him up a bit, not more than an inch or two  
“Stitches?” he laughed “bitch you don’t hit that hard”  
And then I slammed his face back down, the full weight of my shoulder behind my hand, caught his cheekbone right on the edge of the table, and as he was sliding down to his knees to check his bleeding face I kicked his ribs for good measure as I took Jim by the hand to lead him away.  
“Don’t I?” I said looking back at him “Run along boys if you know what’s good for ya.” and they did, they scattered like roaches when you turn the light on. 

It was the biggest smile I had ever seen on Jim’s face, he didn’t care that a girl stood up for him, what he cared was Tom wasn’t going to be a problem anymore because now, I was at his side. That grin is like the Devil’s grin, you can’t look at it too long or you get lost in it. I got lost in it, have been lost in it these past thirty odd years.

“What was that? Where did all that come from?” he was giggling through his question  
“Well, my Da didn’t raise an only daughter not to stand up for herself. And I told you before, I never lose a fight.”  
“That was great, really, best thing I’ve seen.”  
“Yeah? Well the looks on his boys faces were pretty swell too.” I lit a cigarette, a victory smoke if you will.  
Jim got quiet out of no where, he seemed to tense up again and I couldn’t tell what had done it.  
“What’s wrong?”  
“They are going to spread rumours about you now, people are going to think we’re having sex. I don’t care about me, but surely you don’t need to get caught up in all that.”  
“Jim, if I cared I wouldn’t have said it.” I french inhaled and let it all halo around me for a second before walking through it.  
“Don’t you have a boy you’re keen on?” he asked like ruining my reputation would stymie my chances of a date  
“I do, he’s staying at my place, my parents are out of town and it’s all very scandalous. I just beat up another guy for challenging his honour, I’m like a knight in shining armour.”  
Jim flushed, and even under streetlamps I could see the pink climbing up his neck, across the bridge of his nose, making the tips of his ears scarlet against his tar black hair. He started watching his feet, shuffling along the road. The utter shock and confusion on his face was as priceless as the moment at the bar.  
“You’re taking the piss aren’tcha?” he looked away “you did just stand up for me, who wants a boy like that anyway?”  
I stopped dead in my tracks. Had no one ever shown interest in him? And then I remembered that he was the outcast at school, I couldn’t name a single friend of his, maybe I was the only one he’d ever had. I grabbed at his hand and it pulled him back towards me ungainly. I took hold of one of his belt loops and pulled him so we were as flush as we could be, feet against one another, thigh to thigh, so close we had to strain our necks to look each other in the eye.  
“I’m not, I do.”  
I kissed him.  
He stopped breathing for a moment before letting out the biggest sigh of relief he could. He kissed like a twelve year old, kept his lips tight until I ran my tongue across his lower one, only then did the pink of his tongue creep out, touched mine tentatively and then wandered into my mouth with no coordination. It didn’t matter that he had no technique, his lips were soft, plump and it wasn’t just from the bruising. Some people kiss and there is simply too much spit in their mouths or they are so repetitive with their tongues you can guess the pattern or that they’re trying to write the alphabet, Jim wasn’t like that at all. He explored, and in no time he was nipping at my lips and swapping the angle of our faces, his breathing was heavy but his hands were still at his side. I grasped the back of his neck, thick hair interlaced with my fingers and I never wanted to let him go. Finally, finally he put his hands on my waist and began kneading my t-shirt in his fingers. And then he pulled away.  
His eyes were glassy, he looked dazed, looked beside himself.  
“I’ve never, so you know, not with” and he trailed off “don’t know if I want...if we” he trailed off again.  
“Uh, oh Jim, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I assumed, that was dumb, are you, well, are you gay?”  
“What? No, no, no, not that there’s anything wrong with that right, but, I, jesus”  
He started walking away, in a rush, to get no where in particular.  
“Jim, wait!” I yelled jogging after him  
When I finally caught up to him he didn’t meet my gaze, just kept up with the little frustrated breaths through his nose. I kept my distance, space seemed like what he needed.  
“Do you just mean to tell me you’re a virgin?”  
“Yes, fine, happy? I mean fuck, ugh, I just don’t, I dunno, I just haven’t and now with”  
I stopped him with a finger to his lips.  
“Jim, it’s okay. I am too, well mostly, well I say I am. I am” I didn’t know how to say it then, how to tell him that, when I had I hadn’t wanted to and so it didn’t really count right? I noticed the confusion on his face, I had to backpaddle, now was not the time to go into a sorted past. “No one really counts head anyway right?”  
He huffed back a laugh and took my hand, finally met my eyes again.  
“We don’t have to ya know.” I wanted him know that  
“But, we could, we can, right?”  
“Yeah, we can, someday.”  
“Right.” And the grin was back “home?”  
“Yessir.” I replied, starting our pendulum again, controlling time the only way we could as we walked back to my home.

Now I know what you’re thinking, this is the part where we went back to my house and I make good on my little promise from earlier in the night. This is the part where you start recognising Jim Moriarty, where he comes into his own in more ways than one, but I’m sorry it’s not. We got home, we slept in the same bed and we tangled into one another and kissed. I told him he could relax and when he did it was wonderful. I could tell he was excited by all of it, the sure sign wasn't hard to miss but he didn't want more than a bit of haffing, was contented just to know I wasn’t pulling away from him. I fell asleep with my hand on his stomach and he didn’t have nightmares that night. I found out when he sleeps soundly that he snuffles between every couple of breaths.


	3. The Oilliphéist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sebine begins to recognise the man the world will fear in her future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An Oilliphéist is a dragon-like creature from Irish mythology, just in case you're wondering - which you're probably not.   
> Thanks again for reading - come hang out on my tumblr  
> For poetry and the like try: http://yestheladylaudanum.tumblr.com/  
> For fandomness : http://belonephilic.tumblr.com/

“I’m sorry, you can’t stay. I’ll talk to them and see if you can once they meetcha after dinner tomorrow night, alright?”  
“I know I can’t stay, you know I want to and that’s what’s important.” he kissed me at my gate and walked home is his school uniform on a Sunday night, couldn’t very well go home in my jeans to his house. I worried about him, knowing there was nothing I could do to change the situation and hating myself for it. 

When my mam and da got home it seemed like the weekend hadn’t happened, I couldn’t look across the sitting room to see Jim buried in a book - just my father in his chair, lazily flipping through television stations. My mother asked why the day bed was unmade as she came down the corridor carrying its linens and I lied, quickly, said Biddy had been over and that’s where the beer had gone and I made her stay the night. She bought it, they almost always did. It hurt a little bit watching her loading the cotton sheets into the washer, knowing I couldn’t just go back to the room and inhale Jim anymore, he’d be washed away and who knew when I’d get that sleep warmed smell again. 

We sat down to dinner, all of us at our regular seats - me at the head and my parents on either side.   
“I’d like to have a friend to dinner tomorrow.” I said between bites  
“Oh Biddy can come over whenever she’d like, you know that.” My mother replied quickly  
“No, not Biddy. Um, his name is James, we go to school together.”  
“Oh no, a boyfriend.” my father huffed, peppering his carrots for the fourth time  
“No, not at all.” I only half-lied “ we’re both reading enthusiasts, meet when I went to pick up my order. He’s really just another friend so I want you to meet him.”  
“Well, his parents can drop him off around five then.”   
“Oh, I don’t his dad will be able to, he’ll just ride his bike over.”   
“I would like to speak with his father then, to make sure he knows where his son is.” My father was a stern man, always had been - a result of his military service.   
“Yes sir.” I said into my meal, knowing that if my father spoke to Jim’s there would be no dinner and Jim would probably suffer some consequence.   
“His family live close by? Do you know his father’s name?”  
“Not really, and yes.” I don’t know why I thought avoiding the answer would save me from saying it.   
“Well, if that’s not cryptic, honestly Sebine.” My mother had that lock-jawed way of speaking to me, teeth clenched so she wouldn’t get wrinkles from using her face for expression, especially when she was displeased with what I was doing.   
I rolled my eyes and reluctantly answered “Fiolan Moriarty, they live across town.”  
“Oh.” they said almost in unison, the name carried with it a certain amount of dread even then but for wholly different reasons.   
“Nevermind, I’ll just see him at school. It’s fine, don’t bother.”   
I was internally crushed, there wasn’t a way this would work, and even if neither of my parents said it aloud they didn’t want it to work. I did my best to hide my disappointment, but I knew it was written across my face. We finished the meal in silence.

My family said our goodnights and we disappeared into our respective bedrooms. I laid out on my back, arms extended as far as they’d go and tossed my head frustratedly from side to side. Two hours passed, and when they had, with no din from the master bedroom, I decided it was safe to leave.   
Jim’s house wasn’t that far a walk, it wasn’t that close of one either so I took my bike and flew down the streets and through skips cutting my way across lamp lit night to find his home. The lights were still on, couldn’t tell which room was lit but there was a glow of a TV in another one; the only one on the road that had any signs of life. As I approached I could hear the booming voice of Foalan Moriarty. 

I couldn’t understand most of what he was saying, but you don’t need to speak a language to hear the intention of words. Anger has a certain weight to it, no matter what syllables a person uses to express it. The only thing that made sense to my ear amidst the jangle of our heritage were all the curses he was spewing in English. My blood began to boil. Jim was mine, my what I did not know. For no particular reason at all I was protective of him after three days and I knew I couldn't just be witness to what was happening. I knew I couldn’t just barge in either. I may have known how to hold my own, even then, but Foalan was drunk, and had at least head and shoulders on me, he was in the kitchen close to all the knives. I had to wait for a moment of opportunity. I peered through the window, eyes trying desperately to catch Jim’s.  
Jim was all apologies, cowering, hands trying to guard his face while allowing his body to take the deepest of the lashes. He was held on the spot, under the smothering waves of his father’s strong and thick veined hands, drowning the way people do when a rip tide takes them off the coast. And then he saw me. If only for a split second he saw me. And his eyes became hollow - if it had been embarassment I would have known, but there was something in his widening facial expression that told me to run. I did no such thing. Foalan hit him up the back side of his head and Jim went down, stayed down, breathing hard but stifling the sound of crying to avoid more blows. 

“Soith” he sneered under his breath grabbing a bottle of liquor, turning off the lights in the kitchen and disappearing into their small sitting room.   
Jim got off the floor a few moments later, wiped his nose with his sleeve and then his eyes with his cuff. He wasn’t bleeding, but he wasn’t in good shape either. He tilted his head, signaled to the right and I followed him around the house, met him at his bedroom window. He cracked it just a hair and before I began talking he put a finger to his lips urgently. He dissolved into the darkness of his room for a minute, returned with a note

You can’t be here, he’ll kill us

I gesture for a pen and he hands it over- 

I can’t just leave you. I won’t. 

You have to, please

Come with me then. If he hurts you again I swear I’ll kill him

You don’t mean that, I’m not worth it. Just go

We’ll figure something out Jim. Remember the stars

He starts writing another response when his door flies open. Foalan. He saw me, saw my shadow outside the window, saw the paper in Jim’s hands. I panicked for Jim, my heart jumped out of my throat and I didn’t notice his father wasn’t in the door frame any more.  
“Run” is all Jim said as he dashed after the drunkard  
I turned but it was too late, he was a few steps from me and he had a rage in his eyes that all true drunks have, a hatred of the world, an undeniable wrongness within them. 

“Who the fuck are you? The fuck are you doing here?” he was quiet then, but he was advancing on me, I had no where to go, backed up into the hedges along the side of the house. When he took my arms into his hands I thought they would break in two with no real effort under his grasp. He slammed me into the brick and the blood in my ears was all I could hear and then he starts whispering in my ear and the acrid smell of days old beer on his breath made my stomach turn.  
“You here to fuck my son? I don’t think so.” One of his hands goes down the front of my jeans and it’s happening again. I started reliving the experience from years back and I froze, but when his hand dipped under the elastic of my underwear the fight in me burnt through. I kneed at him as hard as I could, striking out at the one part of him I certainly wanted nowhere near me. He hit me square across the face, sent me a few feet through the knee-high bushes, I thought surely this was how it would end. My stupid infatuation with the odd boy from school was going to get me raped and murdered and probably him killed too. 

“Stop” it’s Jim’s voice but it’s not, and his father laughs as he straddles my hips  
“I said stop Foalan, right now.” this is the voice, the one people gossip about in the underbellies of the world, the voice of Moriarty, the voice that brucks no rebuttal. It’s the first time he used it, fathoms deeper than it ought to have been for his age, for his stature. The beginning of things to come.   
Foalan was not smart enough to listen to Jim, starts unzipping his flies but stops abruptly when he hears a pistol being cocked behind him.   
“Ní bheidh tú” his father took himself in hand and leaned over me with that deranged look losers get when they think they’ve won, he start pumping himself near my face.  
“Ní bheidh mé?” Jim closed the distance in strides so fast I didn’t see it happen and fired without hesitation into his father’s temple.   
Foalan’s body went limp and sank on top of me. Jim hoisted him up enough for me to get out from under him, asked me to do up his pants and I do, then lets him fall without grace back onto the grass.   
“Someone will have heard, get home now.” Jim’s voice was still modulating in the tone of authority I only ever see him do business in nowadays. There is a trill of delight under the depth of ascendancy. I obeyed. Crying my whole way home, avoiding any main road. I could hear the sirens and I wondered what would come of my Jim. 

~

School on Monday morning was humming, alive with rumours and half truths, some people were laughing about it, joking that James was so obnoxious both his parents offed themselves so they wouldn’t have to deal with him. The teachers didn’t seem any more conciliatory, and I heard them say things about how it was inevitable and how the whole Moriarty family was like that, that they bet Jim would do the same thing eventually.   
Jim of course was nowhere to be seen on campus, probably busy with police, with children’s services, with fucking funeral arrangements for all I knew.   
My world was grey without him. I didn’t see him the next day either, my monotonous routine was driving me into hole, I stopped taking notes, I stopped responding in class. I thought Jim had been arrested, taken to Castlerae and I would never see him again.   
It must’ve been a week until I saw him, maybe ten days, surely not a fortnight. And when I saw him again, everything and nothing had changed about him. He still glowed. He was still my Jim, the one people had been saying I was pity fucking cos his Da had offed himself, the one that people whispered had killed his father and at that, I had laughed at because if they had only known.   
“James” I sighed out, extending my arms out to take hold of him  
“Sebine” he breathed into my hair

It was as though no time had passed at all. His father wasn’t gone, I wasn’t holding a murderer to my chest with no intention of letting him go. He kissed me, held my face between his hands, pushed my cheeks together and it was nothing like that first kiss. It was urgent, it was controlling and it sent heat pooling down my spine immediately. And then he was moaning into my mouth and neither of us cared that we were in to middle of the car park at school, it didn’t matter that others students were staring, some shocked, some awed, some blushing at our public display. He had come on campus just to see me, just to kiss me, to wrap his arms around the back of my waist and feel me; he wasn’t in uniform, he was in a suit, a shabby suit but a suit none the less. And he smelled like my cigarettes, had he been smoking my brand in our separation, keeping me close in his senses, he had.   
When he pulled off he didn’t say anything, left me with my wet mouth open and smiled. He pulled my hand and led me off grounds, I ditched my classes and never looked back, to afraid to become a pillar of salt.   
He explained to be that they bought it, that the authorities assumed Foalan had done it himself. Jim said he made a good show for them, that he’d been crying when the police arrived, holding his father’s head in his hands wailing, he had made sure to swoop over him , scream at the gun and chuck it with a curse into the garden - to explain away his prints on the weapon of course. No one thought better of it, he was just a kid, just an orphan now. When the officers scooped him up from the ground he’d hissed out in pain, he normally never let onto his injuries and doing so just bought him more sympathy - sitting in the back of an ambulance, the bruises, the cracked rib from earlier that night, the black bloom under his eye. Everyone just felt sorry for him. He’d just got back from an office where they told him the house had been willed to him after his mother died, the only good thing Foalan ever did. 

“Live with me Sebine.” he said, pleaded more like and the veneer of his innocent orphan plan cracked when he looked me right in the eye. He was Jim, but he was more than that.   
“I, what will my parents think?”  
“You’re old enough. We’ll make our way. There’s money left to me, it was my father’s from my grandma and now it’s mine. Live with me.”  
Anyone who knows Moriarty now, knows it is impossible to say no to Jim. It always has been and I said yes. 

It wasn’t an easy transition, moving from my family home to Jim’s. I can’t blame my parents for their frustration - honestly no one wants their only daughter moving out in the middle of sixth year, no one wants her to be doing it with no intentions of marriage, especially if there isn’t that one necessary factor that would make a girl normally do such a thing - pregnancy. Of course they assumed I was being childish, that he and I were fucking on a regular basis, that this was some sort of first love which would fade over time as they all do. I couldn’t explain to them then why I was doing it, still can’t now that I think about it. I must have known somewhere in my bones that Jim would be my life, didn’t know how, or why or the way all of this would turn out, but I knew. I only took from my parents house that which I needed most, I took my clothing and I took my books; everything else seemed inconsequential. James’ house had furniture so I didn’t even bother bringing my armchair, we went out and bought new bedclothes, we took over the master bedroom and felt very much like adults for finally being able to sleep in the largest room of the house. 

~

“I’m not dropping out.” I said over a quiet dinner the first week I moved in  
“Neither am I. Just taking the mourning holiday I’m allowed. We’re getting out of here Sebine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations as best I could do:  
> soith: bitch  
> Ní bheidh tú: you won't/ wouldn't  
> Ní bheidh mé? : wouldn't/won't I?


	4. No, you need me

~  
There were rumours all around school, in hallways and the Jacks, everyone thought we’d gotten married and were trying to keep it a secret for one reason or another.  
“Is James a good husband?” Biddy asked me as we walked through corridor towards class, we always had a companionable openness, it was like a sisterhood but nothing nearly so maudlin.   
“I wouldn’t know.”  
“So yer not then?”  
“God no, how pedestrian.”  
“So why? Is it the sex? Is it good?”  
“Wouldn’t know that either, we aren’t like that, well not yet, I dunno if we ever will be.”  
“What does that mean?”  
“I dunno. It means we need each other, in a way that isn’t so common. He’s good to me if you’re wondering though.”  
“Well so yer datin’ then, that’s nice, I can’t get Andrew to go steady for the world”  
“I don’t know that we’re dating, we’ve never really talked about it. Like I said, it’s something bigger than that.”  
I got no response from her as we took to our desks, over time she would fade out of my life like everything else but Jim. We took Leaving Certificate exams together, still not sure how he managed to make that happen since he was under me in school. It seems Jim was always ahead of me in the planning department. I bet it had something to do with the fact that the whole damn town thought we were going to pop out a litter of children and the school didn’t want to have a father in it’s classes. That’s always what I’ve thought anyways but with Jim things are always more complicated than they seem and even I don’t know how complicated they really are. 

~

At home we had settled into something of a routine. I wish at times we could go back to that now. Now it’s all going to bed at seven am to be at a meeting by nine, nowadays I run on caffeine and nicotine, inertia and adrenaline, learnt to eat what I get, sleep when I can and never let my guard down. It wasn’t like that then.   
Something had definitely changed in my James. Anyone would suspect that it would, you kill your own father and your psyche is bound to alter a bit. He had become emboldened by his freedom. And when I would get out of the shower, when I would get home after him from school, when we got home from the shops with groceries still under each arm he would kiss me like he owned me. The deep sort of kisses people say make them weak at the knees. Jim would push me up against the nearest surface and bunch my clothing under his hands. And Jesus did I want him. There was something elemental about him, about the way he moved, he was atomic, he made up the cosmos. I wanted him like a child wants candy at a fair, I didn’t care how, I just needed to have it. I do of course attach far too much sentiment to our first fumblings, but that’s what one does with memories of such a man.   
We were in the kitchen, I was cleaning up after supper, which was nice, if I cooked he cleaned, we had a balance of power then. He had put away the last plate and I was busy trying to get the baked on crust from our Toad in Hole off the side of the damn pan when he came up behind me and started kissing me. I remember the awful teal marigolds I was wearing and discarding them into the murky dishwater. He had never seemed interested in more than kissing, than rubbing up against one another and I had never pushed. His lips were on my neck, I could feel his breath coming down onto my collar bones and it was like mist settling over hills. He took my hips in hands tightly, too tightly, he was hungry and the carefulness he normally had was washed away down the sink with the soap and grease. He started pressing into my back and I could feel the length of him against my arse. I couldn’t help it I pushed back. His right arm wound up my torso, under my shirt and he splayed his hand across my breastbone, pressing so my breathing was changed by the force with which he held me. I wanted more, I wanted all of him, everything. When his left snaked it’s way down my skirt I didn’t want it anymore. I sent him stumbling backwards into the opposite counter, unable to contain the visceral reaction. He stood across from me, wide eyed and confused.   
“Jim, I’m sorry, I just, I don’t know where” my voice was not my own but I was almost in tears.  
“You can just say no” he was crushed but not showing it.  
I didn’t want to explain that I had a flashback to his father’s hands on the same path, didn’t want to tell him I’ve never had someone touch me and enjoy it, it was too complicated to say in that moment. I had to correct this, I had to make sure he knew it wasn’t him.   
“I wanted to do it for you first, please” I made our bodies flush as I said it.  
He went from half-mast to full the moment I ran my hand down his trouser front. I had done this before, I had even liked doing this for other boys, it had nothing to do with me being in my body and I got all the praise for the act. His shoulders heaved as he took deep trembling breaths while I cupped him, massaged him through fabric. I knew how he liked it, if he didn’t think I’d caught him wanking in the shower more than once he was daft, and Jim wasn’t daft. I didn’t want to just give him what he got on his own. I wanted this to make an impression, go off the beaten path, leaving him euphoric.   
“Do you want it?” I said biting my lower lip and undoing his belt, all he could do was nod “Are you sure? That didn’t sound like a yes.”   
“Yes, fuck, yes” it became a litany, as I unfastened his trousers and let them fall to the floor along with his pants. A repetitive statement of desire. I bet he looked ridiculous, twenty different shades of red across his face, clothing pooled at his feet, shirttails framing either side of his cock, he still had his tie on even. I couldn’t have cared less.   
As I took him in hand his flesh was feverish, and I was glad to find my words to Tommy at the pub were not mistaken. “Oh, Jaime, you’re so hard for me.” he always hated that name, but he melted under it when I started slowly shifting his foreskin up and down over his head. There really isn’t a more honest look than the one you see on a man’s face the first time you touch him, if they like it, if they don’t, if they’re nervous it all plays out in their expression. And James was wide open to me.   
I kissed him, everywhere but the mouth, sometimes the corners of his lips, but I made little suckling lines across his jaw, feeling stubble under my tongue, I sucked a blood blister into the crook of his neck, marking him as mine because he was. I never sped up my pace, kept the rhythm painstakingly slow so I could hear him keen for the first time, for as long as possible. He didn’t try chasing the friction until the end, he went up on his tip toes, rocked his hips, eyebrows knitted together tighter than I’d ever seen. I lifted my shirt, started pulling him off so the head of his cock was on the hot skin of my belly, so he could feel more than just my hand while I rucked myself against his thigh. The noises he had been making the entire time stopped abruptly like he was choking, his eyes flew open to find mine and then he came. It couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes, stamina isn’t the point when you’re that age anyway, but it felt like we stared at one another after he finished for an eternity. He was shivering when he let his eyes close and his head fall back, slumping down into the counter that supported him.   
“Sorry ‘bout that” he said when he looked back to me, looked down at his come seeping into my clothes, still sticky on my hand  
“Don’t be” I said and raised my hand to my lips to take some of his release into my mouth, it was rich, salty, acidic but it tasted like Jim. Nothing has ever changed that taste. Some men are prone to tasting sour tending on the diet, some taste downright lethal after they drink too much, or awkwardly sweet after an abundance of fruit, not Jim. Jim was then and is now exactly himself and nothing else, his come is his come, it’s an essence of him that tastes like home as sick as that is.   
He watched me, enwrapt at seeing me taste him for the first time and purse my lips like I was eating raspberries on a summers day. I couldn’t help a hum of satisfaction and then was totally taken aback when his tongue swiped out to taste himself as well.   
“Hmm, don’t know what I was expecting” he licked what he could from my fingers and then kissed me with a mouth full of himself. We were swapping him, but we were swapping us.   
My Jim has never been ordinary.   
We did our reading that night, laid side by side like an old couple and fell asleep the way we always did. 

~

“Holy Shit! Holy Shit! Holy Shit” I was screaming at the top of my lungs   
Jim dashed around the corner, assuming from my exclamations that something was wrong to find me jumping up and down on the spot like the over excited school girl I was at the moment with a crumpled heavy stock letter in my hands.  
“You got in, oh Seb you got it!” he joined me in my celebrations  
I didn’t know then how absolutely useless a first from Cambridge would be to me now, but it had been my life’s dream to attend, to walk those hallowed halls and it was all coming to fruition. It wouldn’t be until late September that we would actually move to Oxbridge and start our new lives. Jim got his acceptance letter to Cambridge, but as most of you know there is no record of him there. No record of my love anywhere.   
The summer months are lovely in Ireland, we’ve soft weather and nights that make you want to wander around in the hillsides. Jim had convinced me that neither of us needed to work, we had the money not to and we deserved not to. His sense of entitlement came to him like acquired facial markings, over the course of time and then would never be removed. So we spent days lounging in each other’s pyjamas, drinking too many cups of tea and reading. He told me he was going to rule the world and that I would always be his right hand man. I asked him if that made me his queen and he simply said that royalty was beneath us, that they would bow to us, but he’d get me a crown one day if I wanted it. I didn’t, didn’t need anything more than his presence.   
While I was preparing for our life together, thinking about where we could both get work after we finished, trying to decide if I would ever marry him if he ever asked, figuring out how to tell my parents I would be leaving and I wasn’t sure when or if I’d ever come back; Jim was busy starting up the empire that now reaches farther than Britain’s or Genghis Khan’s ever did. He just wasn’t telling me about it, it should have been cause to worry when I realised what was going on back then. It should’ve driven me away because he was essentially lying to me, because I was raised that relationships were built on trust. But, like I’ve said nothing was so simple with Jim. I bound myself to his side the moment he killed his father and dehiscing that adhesion would have killed me too.   
“I’m going out.” was all he said when he left on that Friday afternoon, not to where, not when he’d be back, not what he was doing.   
I didn’t respond past a nod and a return to my copy of A Problem from Hell. I didn’t know that Jim had started in on a drug trade, didn’t know he wasn’t getting his hands dirty but was pulling strings for our small geographic spit on the map. I didn’t know he’d been doing it since we moved in together, that he caught the attorney that executed his father’s will in a the mens with a mirror and an eight ball and worked his way into the business from the side.   
What I knew is that when he came back to me on Saturday morning, before the sun had risen was that he had been worked over,and good. Now, Jim can take a beating, he knows how to move so it doesn’t hurt so bad when you get hit, but he didn’t know how to defend himself from anyone but his father or the occasional idiot at school. He staggered into the doorway of our bedroom with his left eye swollen shut and blood on his hands. If I had seen him only in profile I would have had a hard time identifying him.   
“Jim, what happened?” I was shocked, I’d never even seen him this bad, his father knew how to hide his violence, but who ever laid into Jim meant to send a message loud and clear and had written in it hematomas.   
“Business went south.” he hissed  
“The fuck are you on about Jim? What the fuck have you done?” my tone was motherly as I set him down on the side of the bed and brushed back his hair from his face  
“Distributor wanted more than he’s worth, had to send a message.”  
“Jim, what are you talking about?”  
“Seb, this is how we’re going to rule to world.” he was looking at me through his one good eye and smiling like a madman.   
“Wait, are you running drugs? You dumb twat, the fuck Jim!” and then I wasn’t touching him at all, I was standing over him, I was shouting and I didn’t care if the neighborhood heard me at the ungodly hour either.   
“I don’t run the drugs, that would be stupid. I run the people who run them. There was just a miscommunication about that, but it’s set straight now.” the Devil’s grin is back and this time it made me feel hollow. Who was this boy, when had this happened?  
“Jim” I asked him coldly “is someone dead?”  
“I dunno Sebine, I didn’t exactly take his pulse when I left him now did I?”   
This was not the James I escorted from the bookshop months ago, this was the Jim who didn’t hesitate to raise a gun and fire, just a shadow of the Jim I follow now.   
“James,” I started crying, I collapsed to puddle on the ground. “I can’t take it, I’m going to but, I can’t have you just, just” and then uncontrollable sobbing  
“Sebine, I’m sorry, I” and I think he meant it, maybe he meant it “you were fine when I, you were okay with, with my father, what’s so different with this?”  
“It’s not that Jim, it’s not”  
“Then why the feck are you crying? He was a nobody, if he’s dead and I’m not, isn’t that better?” his voice was conflicted, like at this point he was still trying to justify his action even to himself.   
“I’m crying because if you killed him and they catch you, I lose you. You fucking bastard. I can’t lose you.” my voice was cracking, I must have looked a sight, tears causing my make-up from the night before run down my face, black rivulets to my chin and neck, staining my sleep shirt.   
His demeanor changed. His pragmatic face came off, he realised that I wasn’t angry with him for the violence, I was angry with him for putting himself in this situation.   
“Hey, hey, Seb,” he knelt down and held me, rocked me like a babe “Sebby, there are people above me, people who know what happened tonight, they’re going to take care of it. I’m not going anywhere.”  
“You can’t go out on your own again.”  
“What, you going to be my knight in shining armour all the time.”  
“Yes” I was deadly serious and he knew it “Think about it, Jim, if you keep doing this, you’ll need someone to watch your back.”  
“And why would I want that someone to be you?” Jim sighed “I can’t lose you either you know.”  
“You saw me with Tom, men don’t see it coming from a woman.” my tears had stopped and I was speaking from strength inside myself I didn’t know. “If you’re doing this, we’re doing this.”  
“These aren’t just bar fights Seb, you can’t just do this.”  
“So, have one of your big boss men get me trained.”  
“We’ll see.”  
“No, no ‘we’ll see’. Say yes right now or so help me I will shadow you and follow you anyway.”  
“Fine, yes.”   
The vulnerability on his face told me too much of why he had done what he had done. He didn’t want me out there in the battlement with him because he wanted me safe, but he understood I wanted the same thing. A silent pact formed, we’d die together and that would be just fine.   
“You need to shower, you’ve ruined your only good suit, and who knows where his blood has been.” I stood up first and extend my hand for his. I’m his guardian now, I thought to myself. He followed me to the washroom, I started the taps and then started undressing him. It wasn’t sexual, it was methodical, moving clothing slowly to avoid opening wounds I mightn't have been aware of. The stiff way he moved his limbs reminded me of the first few days when we lived together, when his rib was still healing. Once he was undressed I shuffled him to the shower and turned to leave him with his thoughts.   
“Help me” it was quiet, it was Jim from the bookshop again.  
I took off my night shirt, stepped out of my panties and crowded into the shower behind him. This was the first time we had ever been completely nude with one another. He sighed something heavy down the drain when I pressed up against him and my nipples were on his back while I reached over his shoulder for the soap. I lathered it in my hands and started at his shoulders, massaging as I went, trying to work out aches and tension. He didn’t move, let me abduct his arms to wash under them, to clean his hands of the other man’s blood. As I watched run down the drain I knew that I could do that for Jim, would do that for Jim. Defend him, defend us and I could care less who stood in our way. I wanted to do that for him. I wanted to know what he’d done.   
I pressed into him so my hips were against back as I ran the soap over his chest and asked “What was it like Jimmy? How badly did you leave him?” and despite the fact that these could have been anger charged question from our previous conversation he knew from my tone of voice, from the circular patterns I was drawing with my fingers down his stomach that I was interested for another reason entirely.   
I’m not sure where it came from, how he so easily inspired bloodlust in me, but I shouldn’t have been surprised, he made me feel alive in ways I hadn’t know possible. I wanted the glory and the gore of it and I wanted him to be the centre of the universe.   
“It all happened so fast, he was on me before I saw it coming.” he stuttered as I slid my hands down between this thighs, the backs of my hands brush up against his bollocks.   
“I had a knife, your knife actually, I cut him once across his torso and he stepped back.” I took Jim in hand, I had over the course of the month or so since that first time found all the little things he liked most, the tempo, the pressure, the way to rub my thumb over his head and under his foreskin. I squeezed on just this side of painful. And turned him around to face me.   
“I didn’t stop, couldn’t, knew he’d come back at me harder” I squeeze in response as I’m pumping him, lean in for a kiss “Ah uh uh, fuck, ow” is what I get in response to my affection.   
His eye was badly bruised, as well as that whole side of his face. But I wanted my lips on him.   
“Lower?” I ask kissing his jaw line  
“Yes.” and he continues the story, I don’t remember details, it doesn’t matter now. What mattered was our little game of back and forth, me asking without him asking, eventually we were speaking in one word as inquiry and response. Lower? Lower.   
When I got to his hips he took my face in his hands, water running off his arms in sheets from the showerhead. He was still bleeding from his lip a bit, and his face wasn’t the beautiful angles it normally was. He was a wreck and then I was on my knees for him.   
“Ungh, Seb, I need this.” he was too polite back then to force me, too inexperienced, he knew he wanted it but he had never had it and he thought it was the act. Maybe it is sometimes nowadays.   
“No Jaime, you need me” and then I traced my tongue along the thick vein on the underside of his cock.   
“You, Sebby, fuck I need you.”  
That was all I needed to hear, I took him as far as I could, and with his prick in the back of my throat I swallowed hard.   
“Holy Jesus, do that again.” I did.  
It was natural for his hands to tangle themselves in my thick curly hair, for him to grip as he mewled with every bob of my wet mouth along his cock, what I couldn’t fit in my mouth I worked with my hand, paid attention to his bollocks so I could feel them tightening, raising to his body as got closer to the precipice. He tasted so clean, soapy and warm, rich and so ridiculously soft on my tongue, the weight of him in my mouth was something I’d craved for months. Now that I had it I wanted to never have to stop. I wanted the smell of him still lingering in his pubic hair, unerased by soap, to never leave my senses. I wanted the quiver in his thighs to make his very body slowly vibrate apart over eons. His fingers tightened enough to dislodge a few hairs on my scalp as he pushed himself forward so my nose was awkwardly smashed against his body and he was as far down my throat as either of our anatomies would allow and he went silent. The first pulse of his come down my throat felt like kettle water it was so hot and he pulled back, allowed me to breath through the next several that followed. When he stopped he looked like a new man, baptised in the fires of hell, standing under the water like he needed to stop himself from smoking. I got to my feet without effort and opened my mouth to show him all the white foamy come he had given me. He smiled with the half of his face he could move and then I swallowed it down. Despite his injuries he pressed his face to mine and kissed me, explored the odd spaces of my mouth between tooth and cheek to lick himself back to himself.   
We went to bed naked, he was exhausted. We barely said a word before we turned the lights out. And when I was sure he’d fallen asleep, certified by his snuffling, I gave into the desire I still had pooling between my thighs. I came after moments, so keyed up that I barely needed to be touched at all, I came to the memory of the look on Jim’s face when he shot his father. Radiant.


	5. And So It Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A drive to Dublin drastically changes Sebine and Jim's life, forever, in more ways than one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: discussions of rape
> 
> Thank you for reading

Jim was wary of taking me to his boss, it’s funny now to think of anyone telling Jim what to do, but it was like that once. He put on his second best suit, told me to dress like I already had the job, not to look too feminine, not that I could help it- his words not mine. His flattery really does get him anywhere. I put on a pair of jeans and wore a black t-shirt stolen from Jim’s side of the wardrobe. I took a knife, put it in my boot, felt like that was some sort of statement. Grabbed my old worn black rucksack with the leather patched bottom and we headed out the front door.We took a black car to Dublin and I had been expecting to get out at some industrial warehouse, movies all make us think these things when we don’t know any better. My blood was thrumming through my veins at a pace that made my skin feel too tight. I kept staring out the window in confusion as we entered the city proper. I was not expecting to get out at an address nestled in between other urban buildings, even less was I expecting to read ‘Martin O’Connell Solicitor’ on the door we stepped through.  
“So this is the one is it?” the man behind a large mahogany desk said, not looking up from his papers, in that plummy accent most legal types work for years to perfect.   
“Yes, this is Moran. When does training start?”  
“My dear boy, it already has.” and then he glowered at me, trying to assess my reasons for being there, trying to suss out what it was that made a teenaged girl want to get into ‘the business’. I met him with my blankest, hardest face. Now, at the time I’m sure that expression was still wide open, so easy to read, not like I am today, but it was the best I could do.   
“So, Moran, have you a first name as well?”  
“Of course I do, but I don’t know how that matters.”  
“So defensive. Let me tell you this, it’s probably a good thing you don’t start out in this line of work advertising you’re...well your particular disadvantage, no one cowers at the name Moira am I right?”  
“I certainly never have, sir.” I wondered then how much about me he knew, dropping my mother’s name so casually into the conversation, it couldn’t have been coincidence. But I wasn’t going to falter at a few well placed words.   
“Right then, Jim, if you don’t mind you and I have some business to discuss with you. I’ve got snowballs I’ve got to get rolling and you’re smart enough to stay away from the yellow. Moran here can run along with McCauslin and see how she fairs with the boys.”  
He put his arm around Jim’s shoulders like a father and guided him to a back office, Jim gave me one over the shoulder glance and in it wished me luck, told me to be careful and worried for me all at once.   
I stood in the office for a minute or so. Wondering what I was meant to do, should I sit, or stand, is someone coming for me or should I have known where to go to find McCauslin? My questions were answered before I had time to act on any of them.   
“You’re Moran? Can’t say I was expecting that.” his voice was gruff  
“Can’t say most will be, will they?”  
“Point. Tierney,” he extended his hand. And as I took it he attempted to turn mine under his. I righted his wrist so that we shook with both our thumbs facing the ceiling. He was not going to get the literal upper hand so quickly. He smiled at that. “Call me Maccas, that’s what the rest of ‘em do.”  
“Alright Maccas, what’s first?”  
“Let’s take a drive.”  
I was disquieted getting into the sedan with a man I didn’t know, leaving Jim behind, in a city I was largely unfamiliar with at the time, but I did it anyway. I would do anything I needed to be at Jim’s side and I was determined.   
Once we got inside the building that looked like a regular corner store and wandered into the back room I felt even less assured of myself.   
Four men, all at least a head taller than myself we crowded around two other grappling on the ground. I couldn’t tell if it was for sport or for training, the way the men cheered the fighters on made both seem equally likely. One of them turned to see us enter the ill-lit room, his name was Turner I’d find out later, and a smile flashed across his face that was all lasciviousness.   
“Brought us a bit of rough, eh? Not the prettiest, but I’ll ‘ave a go.”  
Maccas looked at me to gauge my reaction and found me smiling weakly.  
“I didn’t know there would be so many Mr. McCauslin” I said biting my lower lip as shyly as I could manage “But you, you look a tidy bit.” I said walking toward Turner, throwing my hips side to side in that over exaggerated walk women of a certain profession have, completely not my own.  
“At least she’s eager” he said and extended an arm out to beckon me further “I’ll take first run then shall I?” he quipped with raised eyebrows.  
As I took his hand in my own I threw him off balance so I could pin his arm behind himself and twist to the edge of taking his shoulder out of the socket, I swept his feet out from under him and had him on the ground, kneeling for me in less than a second.  
“I’d like to see you try.” I spat at him, my voice full of vitriol.  
Maccas stood with his arms folded and almost giggled. The other men had stopped their skirmish the minute they’d heard the conversation start up and were staring on wide eyed and mouthed like guppies.  
“Boys, meet the new recruit.” Maccas announced triumphantly “Let him up eh? His arm’ll hurt as bad as his pride tomorrow”  
I let him go and stood to take his hand, a gesture of truce, if not respect. I had made my point and it was heard, that was all I’d wanted.   
“Who wants a woman at their shoulder?” Turner asked  
“Moriarty, McConnell’s new protégé. Not our job to care, we’ve just got to get her field ready, though I’d say she could teach you a thing or two.”  
“I’m Turner, thats Reynolds, Neck, O’laughlin but just call him Strap, Blackwood, and that rich dumb son of a bitch, is Eofordhill just call ‘em Hill.” He gestured to all of the men, and now I couldn’t tell you that any of them were distinct enough to warrant a place in my long term memory. All of them were brawn and very little brain. No wonder I survived.   
They all gave nods as their names were called and stood defensively.  
“Where’d you learn to fight anyway?” Maccas asked “I thought we’d be starting from scratch.”  
“A lady never tells.” And I wasn’t about to, but I’ll tell you, my father was a military man and proud of it too. He taught me the honour and the ethics of it all very young. It wasn’t until after I had a remarkably bad evening, that he doesn’t even know the details of, that I asked him to teach me to fight and he complied. I’d been fighting ever since, still am in all the ways I began and more.   
“Let the onslaught begin, rules first - basically there are none, no weapons this round just what you were born with. Three minutes a round. Okay pair off, ladies choice.”  
I went for the largest of them, wanted to test my ability, wanted to see where I stood. I lost that first round, we swapped partners, couldn’t breathe when the second ended, we swapped partners, was bleeding from my mouth after the third. I was having a hard time seeing straight, my mouth tasted like pennies but I had never felt so alive. Even if I were losing, I was getting better, this is what I had asked for. I was doing this for Jim and I was damned if I were going to give up.   
“Smoke ‘em if you got em.” Turner called before the last round started, I was thankful for the break. Shook a cigarette out of the pack I kept in the bag I toted along with me and gave into the sensation of cool smoke over the cuts in my cheek from my teeth. Maccas was going to be my last opponent, he wasn’t the biggest, but he was in charge for a reason. I calmed myself while I drew in clouds, I had to make this good.   
When the respite ended I stretched out my arms, popped all the vertebrae I could so it wouldn’t jolt so much when I took hit and huffed out a heavy breath. Win or lose I could do this.   
Maccas was fast, he was like lightning compared to the other guys, moved forward with an ease that told you he could have his coup de grâce whenever he wanted it. For every three blows he got in I made one, he could block my more obvious attacks with his eyes closed. Sometime during the fight I noticed a mottled scar on his shoulder-cap, I had seen that before, shrapnel, just like my father. When I saw my opening I went for the scar as hard as I could, knowing that if there wasn’t still metal in him at least the nerve pain would be awful. I was right, I got a kick in after that. And while he was going for my kidneys I managed another hit against his injury and countered it with an uppercut from the other direction. The time stopped.   
“Good, good. You made your rounds.” Maccas said rubbing his shoulder as I was wiping sweat from my forehead and bending over to catch my breath. “How’d you know?”  
“Know what?”  
“My shoulder is my achilles heel so to speak.”  
“Lucky guess.” I lied  
“Hmm, good guess.” he didn’t buy it. “Let’s get you back to the office.”  
We pulled up to the storefront legal office and I took my leave of the sedan  
“Be here tomorrow at 6am, tomorrow, we play with knives” He smiled at me ducking his head so I could see him out of the passenger window.   
I met Jim in O’Connell’s office. And the look on his face was priceless. I was drenched in sweat, still bleeding a bit so I kept swiping my tongue out to catch it, I was painted in bruises and that was only what he could see with my clothes on. But I was smiling so wide the corners of my mouth hurt.  
“Jeeesus, look at you bae.”  
“I know, pretty huh?”  
“The most beautiful lass I’ve ever laid eyes on.”   
Good then, he wasn’t turned off by the injuries.   
“Let’s go home” he said leading me out the door “Oh, we live here now by the by”  
“What?”  
“Yeah don’t worry all the books will be brought up. No need to fret.”  
I should have wanted to argue with him for moving our household without consulting me, should have been a bit upset that he didn’t mind seeing me so worked over; but, I wasn’t. I was beaming with pride, I was becoming a new woman and he a new man.   
He drove us away from the building in a car that ‘by the by’ happened to be ours as well. I stared out into the night, counted streetlights as we past them and listened to Jim croon along to one of the Rat Pack singing a song about Chicago. I can’t remember which one he liked best then, it changes every couple years I suppose. Well, really Jim changes every couple of minutes.   
“I’m starving.” I drawled out as we past an Indian place.  
He stopped abruptly and swung us into a parallel spot less than a block up from the restaurant. When had Jim learnt to drive? And when had he learnt to drive like that? My heart sank a little bit when I started to put together all the afternoons and nights he went out and I hadn’t been at his side. I had assumed he was getting his head straight, needed the alone time. Then I wasn’t likely to jump to conclusions, all I ever saw was the best in Jim; I know better now and it isn’t a bad thing, not really. Now all of his worst is what I see, and we’re a reflection. I like the way I look in that mirror. He got out, opened the door for me and bowed like a valet, always so dramatic.   
“I just, I need a minute. You know what I like.”  
“I’ll order you lamb stew and some pekoras then.” he prodded me with an elbow.  
“Don’t be an arse.” he knew exactly what I didn’t want, I knew he was joking and so I lit my fag and rested up against the car.  
It wasn’t incredibly late and as people walked by they pointedly did not look at me, lowered their voices. Right, I didn’t look like I belonged there, because I didn’t. I shrugged on an old well worn jacket from my bag to cover the bruising you could see on my arms, there was nothing I could do for the rising lavender and crimson on my cheeks or the blood in the corner of my mouth. I pulled my hair back nicer instead, plucked a few strands so they hung around my face like a halo of curls. Smiled at my reflection, green eyes skewed by the tint on the glass. I liked what I saw, I thought my father would have been proud of me and then redacted it because if he knew what I was doing it for he would have been ashamed.   
When I went inside, more accusatorial looks came, especially as I joined Jim. I’m sure there were whispers of ‘bet that was a row’ and ‘probably a domestic’ behind our backs. I couldn’t be arsed to care. Jim ordered me a mango lassi and there were samosas waiting for me on my side of the seating. I pecked him on the forehead, at his hairline before I sat and started devouring.   
“Where’s yours?” I asked mouth full once my saag paneer had arrived.  
“Dinner with the boss, totally slipped my mind that you hadn’t eaten.”  
I ate quickly because the sparring had really taken it out of me, not because being watched made me uncomfortable. Jim’s tried over the years to make me uneasy by simply watching me, he succeeds sometimes, but mostly I don’t give him the satisfaction.   
He paid in cash as I was finishing, didn’t want the change, and from the look of his billfold really didn’t need it. So this job came with salary? pocket money? I didn’t complain.   
We drove another few minutes, maybe ten, through South Dublin, I took in the nice houses with a small smile, sure that any moment Jim would make a turn and we’d be in one of those unexpectedly bad parts of town. He didn’t.   
We arrived at our new abode and was shocked by it’s lack of humbleness. We had a proper D4 address, we were residence of Donnybrook, we were going to be living among the wealthy and we had no business there. But Jim, being Jim, strolled up to the front door and threw it open like a Master returning to his manor.  
“Honey I’m home” he announced like a dumb fifties television character.  
I walked in behind Jim, still at a loss for why he had been given a house in this elite neighbourhood, what it really meant that he had been given a ‘company’ car. How and why it was just ours seemed like questions I would be better off not asking directly, so I tried anyway.  
“Jim, what are you getting into?”   
“I think you mean : what are ‘we’ getting into.” He said gesturing between us with a flamboyant hand.  
“Yes, fine, ‘we’.” I made air quotes and drew out the last word. He just smiled at me and went about inspecting the furnishings in our new home, running his finger across the mantelpiece as though with a white glove, as though we should have to maid in, as though we had a maid. “Jim, answer me.” I caught his wrist mid-air.  
I was still high from the adrenaline, still in the mode to hurt, to take by physical force.   
“Ho hooo. Careful there, you’re supposed to protect me.” Jim said with a giggle  
“An answer James.”   
“Business, we’re getting into business, we’re getting into the ring, we’re jockeying for power, this isn’t the big leagues but we’re on our way.” His gestures seemed rehearsed, like he had thought out how he wanted to tell me all of this, arms open wide like a showman as he spun around me.  
“What about Oxbridge? What about Leixlip? What about asking me?”  
“We’ll get there by term, you’ll be at the top of your class, practically finished before you start, by the by.”   
“What’s with all the goddamned ‘by the by’ bullshit Jim, what happened to you?” I was seething, he may have been the epicentre of my microcosm but he didn’t just get to control me like this, not my education, not my dreams, not like this.   
“What happened? Seb, what happened? I killed my own fucking father to save you! I killed a fucking Oilliphéist and I got away with it. I beat the system and I realised I never had to back down again. I’m going to rule the world. We’re going to pull the strings!” Jim was yelling, the maniacal way I’ve come to get used to when a master plan epiphanies, the way scientists yell eureka when an experiment can be reproduced and peer reviewed. That was the first time Jim scarred me properly. I may have been evolving, but Jim was done with his Kafkaesque transformation. Jim was the man he is. It had always been just below the surface and now previously placid waters were roiling with heretofore unseen passion. I had lost my boy I thought, instead had gained a man who would become a whisper, a legend in every dark corner of the globe.   
“Jim, I, well, I still want my education.”  
“And you’ll get it but I won’t be enrolling, I won’t be a sizar, while you’re in lectures I’ll be earning a pedigree of my own.”  
“Not without me at your shoulder.”   
“I know it’ll be hard, but I have to go some places alone.”  
“Jim” I cautioned him, we were walking on dangerous ground.   
“This will work, you have to trust me.” His voice was cloud soft again, like a mist settling over moors despite the subject he was implying. I could see the world like a blueprint in his eyes. It occurred to me that I could never leave him, even if I wanted to it wouldn’t be an option. I accepted my fate. I closed the gap between us and rested my arms over his shoulders, tipped my forehead to meet his.   
“Tell me how, impress me bae.”  
“O’Connell isn’t going to be on top forever, not even for long. He trusts me, daft bastard, I’m in his books, I’m seeing plans for all his business, his bosses plans, plans he doesn’t even fully understand but I do because they are too simple not to. And before he knows it I’m going to pull the rug from under him and he’ll fall nicely into the trap he’s made himself.” He kissed the tip of my nose and continued “Your work, my pet, is to do the same on your side, I’ve got the brains, I need the muscle to pull it off. Can you do that for me? Can you make them fear you, for me?”  
“I can do anything for you James.”  
“You’ll have to be ruthless” he said licking his front teeth slowly, enjoying the thought of it “you’ll have to be my hands, come to me with them covered in blood to prove your worth from here on out.” Jim leant in a licked the sticky drying blood from the corner of my lips.   
“Positively drenched” I kissed him, my face sang out with aches, and I found I only wanted more.   
If I were going the way of the sinners I wanted as much pain and pleasure as I could get. I wanted the line smudged out and replaced with a smear where blood and sweat were the only proof of life.   
“I want you.” Jim said against my lips  
I dropped my bruised hands to the line of his waist, pressed both open palmed down on to the straining hardness under his trousers and dropped to me knees simultaneously. There was no reason to go slow, even if this was only the second time I’d done this for him. Slow was not on the menu. I had his sweet day rich skin in my mouth in moments and he moaned at the suddenness of sensation. He pumped his hips, rolled into it. And then, still thrusting into my throat denied his desire for it and asked for more.   
“No, Seb. I want to feel you. I never get to touch you.”  
I stopped. It hadn’t occurred to me that all this time I had been servicing him he wanted to return the favour. That he was aware I was holding myself back from him. I hadn’t let myself believe that we were in love, we never said the words, never spoke of going steady, this didn’t have to be reciprocal, it was bigger than that, I did this for him because I wanted to. He owed me nothing.   
He pulled me up by my hair, half threw me down the corridor to the bedroom then stalked after me. It was a strength and a ferocity that I hadn’t seen him use on me before. I backed myself into the room, still on the floor and then he lifted to my feet, fire in his eyes.   
“Don’t you want me inside you?” He questioned as he pulled apart my button fly jeans  
“Cos I want to be inside of you.” he crowded me toward the bed; pushed me down and started hiking up my shirt. I wriggled against him, struggling to get out from under him. I didn’t want to have to explain, I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t want.   
“Jim” I yelped as his hand found it’s way under my bra “Jim…” again but I could say the word no. My instinct took over and I hit him hard, knocked him off of me and he crashed to his arse dumbfounded. I buried my face in my hands sobbing.  
“I want, but Jim, I haven’t since...and” I wasn’t making sense but I wasn’t thinking clearly.   
“I thought you said you hadn’t. Why would you lie to me?” his words felt like they were rending my flesh off bones. He stood over me and I just wanted to touch him again, but I didn’t want to feel him, I couldn’t meet his eyes. I was of two worlds in that very moment.  
My only option was to tell him and hope that he didn’t mind the damage, I took him knowing full well where he came from, he didn’t have to keep me once he knew. I had no other recourse.   
“Jim,” my voice was small “I was nine, he was eighteen, I didn’t want it, but, I but I never told anyone. I haven’t touched anyone since, not until you. And now you won’t want me cos I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t tell you cos then you wouldn’t want me and this, this is” I rambled and even I could hear the shame in my voice. I had been so drawn to Jim because he was broken like me, just in different ways, but him knowing changed everything. He was silent for a long time, looking away from me like he could bore a hole through the wall and find answer to what I’d just told him in the garden outside the concrete barrier of our new home. He was going to leave, or make me leave. I was going to be alone.   
“What’s his name?”  
“Jim?” I looked up through tear puffed eyes  
“Who, tell me who, and I’ll fix it.”  
“Ryan Mclaughlin but, I don’t…” I trailed off again  
“Don’t what? Want him dead now that you’ve the power to do it? Don’t want me to do what I can so I can be with you all the ways we ought?”  
He was giving me justice, in the way his new world was teaching him and I grabbed onto it like salvation.   
“I don’t want you to do it without me.” I set my heart on killing him, at least I knew my first would deserve it.   
“Bae, I’ll give him to you on a silver platter.”  
It should have been wrong, but it was the most sentimental thing anyone had ever said to me. He got rid of the shadow looming over himself and we were going to get rid of mine together. I wanted to seal our pact with skin, but I needed to get the fear out of my system.  
“Can I smoke in here?”   
“‘Course, we own it, can I ‘ave one too?”  
“Course.”  
We laid out on the bed, taking slow drags. I made a show of French inhaling, the double intake really sets my nerves right.   
“Show me how you do that?”  
“Okay, take a big drag, don’t actually inhale, keep it in your mouth then part your lips a little and breath in from your nose as deep as you can.” I do it after I tell him how.  
He chokes on the smoke, still kind of a novice at this whole experience.   
“Try again, not so quick.”  
After five or six attempts we light more cigarettes and he gets it on the seventh. He smiled at me, sort of swaying. I envied him the nicotine buzz I hadn’t felt since I was twelve. We ashed them out in a little ceramic dish on one nightstand - it was probably intended for jewelry or pocket change but, hell we could do whatever we decided. Teenagers pretending to be adults, aspiring to be gods.   
“Yes.” was all I said taking my shirt off. Agreeing to murder, agreeing to sex; that’s been out default for ages now.  
He was gentler, questioning with his hands, silently asking ‘can I touch you here’ and waiting for my nonverbal reply. He was no less hungry, no less anticipating the act.   
When we were finally both denuded he feathered his hands over my hips and rested his palm between my thighs, cupping my vulva. He parted me with one finger and paused.   
“You’re so...”  
“Wet, I’ve wanted you for the better part of a year Jaime.”  
“Tell me how”   
The innocence in his voice was strikingly juxtaposed to his earlier megalomaniacal speech, he was admitting he didn’t have all the answers, he needed my help.   
“Just move, I’ll guide you.” I said starting a slow rhythm of my hand over his. The alien sensation of his thicker, rougher fingers rubbing over slickness only my hands had known made me gasp. He dipped one finger into me, I let his hand go and dug my nails into the bedclothes.  
“More.” then two  
His breathing was hitching just watching me react. It’s his favourite part of sex nowadays, the feedback he can elicit, it’s a better stoke to his ego than a good orgasm. He couldn’t stop kissing me, my neck, my collar bones, trailed to my breasts. I rolled my torso up to meet his lips, urging him on in nothing more than cracked breath. My bruises ached, moving and tensing seemed like the last thing I should’ve been doing, but I couldn’t stop myself. His thumb started circling my clit as he suckled at one of my nipples.   
“There, right there Jim,” I rucked on his hand like an animal in heat, shame abandoned “holy fuck, don’t stop.”  
He didn’t. The mechanics of sex are nothing special, repetition gets you to the end every time though it’s not imaginative. We didn’t need imagination that night. For the first time in my life I came with Jim Moriarty and I finally understood why sex is a basic human right, a reaction to death, a human need that’s so deeply seated and indistinguishable from any other instinct.   
I shuddered when the last wave broke and tears flooded my eyes. I was the farthest thing from unhappy, I was overwhelmed.   
“What did I do wrong? Why are you crying?” he recoiled immediately at the sight of my tears and I had to pull him back to me by his nape.  
“Nothing’s wrong, it’s just, it finally feels right.”   
I swallowed his mouth in my own, it was sloppy but I didn’t care. I wanted to live inside him, nestle between his molars and make him my home. I pushed him over so he was on his back and I was straddling his thighs.   
“We don’t have condoms.” he said sheepishly  
“I’m not on the pill.” I replied  
“I’ll get the morning after pill tomorrow. Don’t say no now.” I kissed his eyelids closed  
“Sebby.” it was just a whisper  
“Bon” I pushed my palm to his sternum, bit into his skin a little with my blood dirtied nails. He opened his eyes again and gazed at me like I was every star in the heavens.  
“You are gorgeous like this, really” he gestured to my forming bruises “You’re radiant. Do you hurt?”  
“Only when you aren’t touching me.”  
I placed his hands on my hips as I shuffled up his body. I hovered over him and we met each other’s nervous gaze. I couldn’t really read his expression, the best I can liken it to is a person at the top of a rollercoaster, looking forward to the quick descent but terrified the rails might break off the track in the process.   
I sank down onto him, slowly and it didn’t hurt like that first time, I felt full with him inside me but like I had been fractured and was now whole with him under me.   
We were still for minutes, for an eternity, for all the time left in the universe and not for more than a few minutes. Eyes still locked, making vows without words. We’ve never said them. We just don’t have to.   
He didn’t last long, I didn’t come again, neither of those things mattered. We were stepping through this gate together, and on the other side we knew the meaning of that big word ‘freedom’. He was my kingdom, I was his court. He’d been silent before, almost surprised by his orgasm every time I’d ever made him come. Even after more handjobs than I could count at the time and I had mastered his anatomy like a maestro. But that night, with my weight on top of him, gripping his shoulders in an embrace, cheating for every inch of contact, every purchase of lips as I rode him he practically sobbed. My name was on his lips like prayers, he didn’t call out for a god neither of us believed in, made me his deity instead. His nails clawing at me enough to draw blood out of the welts I’d received earlier in the night and the pain just sung through me. Nerves crying out for attention, singing a hallelujah, a requiem mass .  
“Sebine, Seb” he managed between thrusts, “uhhng, mine” he cried out in the throws of his little death.   
“Yours” I replied without qualm when is tremors finally settled  
“Mine. Yours.”  
The closest we’ve ever come to wedding vows. We never said forever, we never said ‘til death do us part’ because we knew it would and it still wouldn’t stop whatever this was; there was no reception, no document to hold us to it.   
Of course over the years we’ve strayed from our bed, sometimes we wanted to, sometimes we had to. Luring people into a false sense of security isn’t hard, people conflate sex with intimacy, intimacy with trust and you’d be surprised at all the information I got through pillow talk and not torture - though torture can be more rewarding for me depending on the partner.   
We didn’t bother showering. Went to be filthy covered in semen, in blood and sweat. That night I relearnt the pace of Jim’s heart, the flutter it goes through while slowing down after the jolt of sex. He had, has, the slightest murmur that only comes with overexertion. Instead of lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub when he’s coming back to earth it runs lub-dub-woosh, lub-dub-woosh. Nothing could ever stop Jim though, septal defect or not, Jim was never faint of heart.   
He held onto me as he drifted off like he was afraid I would disappear, like a drowning man clutches a raft and I wanted to be no where else in the universe.


	6. Knives are just foreplay...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebine snaps a bit and comes to love the weight of a gun

Something you must understand about Jim, and I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but I’ll reiterate. Jim doesn’t exude power he is the embodiment of it. I’m maybe an unknown celestial body if you are an asteroid passing by, but Jim is the Sun and we are all in his thrall. Someday, as all stars do, he’ll implode and we’ll all be too close to escape that event horizon. I looked forward to being in that vacuum, I just didn’t know how it would happen then. 

Morning came too soon, the incessant honk of the alarm on my phone was enough to rouse me, but not Jim. It always came too soon in those days, now we’re lucky to remember the last time we slept and weren’t just running on coffee, cigarettes and adrenaline.   
I got up at four, found the oversized, dark green marble shower was fully stocked with soaps that smelled of wealth. I stood, a blank page the night before, now I had a manifesto written into my skin. The water stayed hot for as long as I wanted it, for as long as I would allow myself to linger. I had to switch focus as much as I was repulsed by the necessity. 

‘Tomorrow we play with knives’  
Well tomorrow was today, I turned the taps to frigid cold, I’d be damned if the boys were going to see any of the softness Jim had teased out of me the night before. I was on a mission now, had to make sure I’d be able to come through for Jim when he needed me most. 

I redressed in in my clothes from the day before- I hadn’t been prepared to stay. I laughed a little out loud at myself for all the rumours I had heard in school about the implications of showing up in your clothes from the day before, with the same make up or ratty hair. Finally the rumours were true, but there was no one here I knew to even joke about it with, no one but the one who made that rumor fact. I missed Biddy for a moment, wondered if we’d ever talk again, we would a few years later, though not under the happy circumstances I was imagining in that moment. 

When I stepped out of the en-suite I kissed Jim on the bridge of his nose; he stirred and I whispered to him “Going to make you proud, bae.”  
“I know you will.” he simpered, squinted and pursed his lips. I gave into the invitation and then he burrowed back into the eiderdown. 

~

I locked the door from the inside before I left, I had no keys. Guess I could’ve nicked them from the pile of Jim’s clothes, or car keys for that matter but, I wanted to walk. It wasn’t that far and I have always had a good sense of direction about me. I had to get my head in order. I listened to Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, imagines myself marching on the promenade, some great goblin about to overtake the city. 

“Maccas, Turner.” tipping my head to greet them as though I had a hat to doff. 

“Moran, you’re early.”

“Yeah and if I weren’t I’d be late, so I’m on time.”

I’m still dragging off my clove when I crouch down onto a metal case in the corner. Secretly I was hoping I didn’t look well shagged, secretly I hoped they’d notice. I wanted to tell someone, anyone, but I held my tongue and they didn’t say a damned thing. 

Small talk ensued waiting for the others, they didn’t realise how easy it was to steer the conversation. And I’m just sitting there finding out who each of them fall under, how they got here, all of that. They spill, tell me more than they ought because I look at them with doe eyes and despite the fact that I could almost hold my own on my first day I’m still just a girl to them. So they doubt my conniving abilities, don’t even consider that one day they’d be looking up to me and a day soon after that most of them wouldn’t be looking at anything but a coffin lid, if they are lucky enough for a burial. 

Now, I may not have bested most of them in pure hand to hand, but let’s just say that I have always been good friends with a blade. Sure I had pulled them in a fight or two before but I had never really needed to use them. Certainly no one had ever used one against me, so I will say that it came as a bit of a surprise the first time Hill’s blade bit into my skin. But, the odd thing is that it only made me feel more alive. I hadn’t felt injured I had felt inspired. I guess that’s why I do this after all these years, there may be a number of other things I would have been good at, but I knew then as I know now that none of them would have fulfilled me the way this does.   
I couldn’t just stay on even ground with the boys either. I had to start laying the groundwork for later. Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that. 

As I looked down at my bleeding forearm when the round was ended, I made a silent resolution to seriously hurt the next person who annoyed me that day. Seem like a psycho and people will fear the instability, if they don’t fear the person behind it outright. Besides, if this was our stage I needed to be a diva, people needed to fear my name as the tingle on the back of your neck at the mention of Moriarty. For that to happen I needed the men at the shoulders of all the key players to know that I was dangerous and that I meant business. 

“So, he fucks you doesnie?” Neck asks just before round starts up, and that’s enough. 

To be perfectly clear I have murdered men since then for less, for smudging the wax job on Jim’s Audi S8 after they stumble into it during a ‘negotiation’, for flashing a too cocky smile at the wrong moment. I allowed him to circle me for a moment, size me up while I gave him my most flustered look, playing into surely what he thought was a sore spot for me.

He lunges and misses me, I nearly trip him but he manages to keep his footing and keep out of the range of my widest sweep. We right ourselves and once again start the dance. 

“It’s cute really, you’re his bitch, I get it. “ he smirks because he’s sure it’s insulting but really it just spurs me on. “Cute you think you could be one of us.” he pants while he throws his head from side to side, popping his neck in that annoying way people who think they have the upper hand do during a fight. 

Once he comes at me again I don’t let him slip away so easily, I’ve got him under my arm for a swift knee to the ribs before I completely overpower him and throw him to the ground. When I’ve got him under me, I don’t just cut, I stab, it’s right through his left arm, the blade embedded so far you can only see the hilt and he’s screaming to brinf the house down. The four others training stop. Sure they were used to the occasional guttural ‘unf’ the common sort of breath loss that comes with being knocked about, even a yell or two in short bursts, usually from the attacker and not the target. But this, this was different, this was one of their own down for the count and in a way they didn’t really intend in these sorts of training exercises. 

I disarm Neck with ease, play the Ka Bar in my hand while I’m licking my lips, looking straight through each of the men staring me down. Neck wouldn’t shut the hell up and his whinging was going on much longer than I had anticipated, weren't these men the vicious enforcers of Ireland’s underworld? Reputation went a long way, most of them had power they didn’t deserve because they were connected to men who made up legends about themselves and paid runners to spread them. I had probably made a big enough impression, but I needed to make sure. 

I leant in to Neck’s face, my knee keeping his chest in place and stage whispered so the rest of the shocked group could hear me.  
“No one fucks me.” as I drive his own blade home through the meat of his hand like a crucifixion stake. As I stood I kicked him across the face, knocked him out so his voice would stop slurring my name. 

“Anyone else think I’m just his bitch? “ I was out of weapons, the men could have easily taken me out if they had thought to, but that’s the amazing thing about power. My stare becomes a weapon, my sniff as I inhale a mixture of my own blood and his, well, it becomes a warning shot. 

“Moran,” Maccas says with a caution in his voice that I hadn’t heard before, like he wants to ask what just happened, or tell me that I’m crazy, or reassure me for the group that no one else thinks that. The men’s eyes searching each other’s expressions for what to do next. 

“I’ll be back tomorrow.” and I left , just walked out while lighting a cigarette, easy peasy. 

I don’t let my demeanor change until I’m in the house safely and then I fall to the ground, my knees nearly gave out on me as I made my way back.   
Adrenaline rush is an amazing thing, it converts fear into energy once you tell your mind that flight and freeze aren’t options. Once the threat is gone, all the blood rushes back to your stomach and even if you won it doesn’t matter because your parasympathetic and your sympathetic nervous systems are arguing with one another and trying to decide if they should keep your heart beating like rapid fire machine gun action or slow it down so you can finally breathe. My legs felt like a blancmange and my blood was rushing through my ears so quickly that I was sure there was a tympany keeping pace to an orchestra between my temporal bones. It was a most surreal feeling . In the moment I couldn’t decide which was better sex or maiming , in that moment all I wanted was both. 

“Jim” I called out, into the cavernous foyer “Jim, I need you” and I did, desperately. 

Jim stalks out of the den, holding his smartphone at an awkward angle , covering the end of it and mouthing ‘O’Connell’ to me. He looks amused, but the tone I hear coming from the other end of the line is anything but. I’m still on the ground, so I get on my knees and mouth ‘please’ at him while I’m already undoing his flies. He’s wasn’t even hard, I didn’t care, just wanted to taste him, to smell him. As he slowly became more interested it was obviously harder for him to talk. And it was a fun little game, something we still do nowadays when Jim is feeling snarky and on the phone with a client he particularly disrespects. 

It’s a hasty goodbye to his boss as he simply drops his phone, to take my head into his hands and use my throat. 

“Oh, bae, you, are crazy” he punctuates words with thrusts. I just smiled and swallowed around his cock as best I could. He finished quickly and I drank him down.   
“O’Connell says you put Tanner’s man in the hospital , they don’t know how long he’ll in traction. Tanner is fuming, want’s your head on a pike!” Anyone else might have said it angrily, disappointedly, but not Jim. He looked like a cat who drank the milk and got the canary too. 

“Told you I’d make you proud.”

The rest of that night was spent against various walls and surfaces as we christened every room in the house in celebration of my , of our little bit of headway.   
Just before we fell asleep in the study, skin clammy from sweat wicking off into the cool air, Jim told me I had to behave, couldn’t take it this far all the time. I just had to be intimidating from now on and that would hold me for a while. Jim told me I was lucky that he was valuable to O’Connell, that without him being necessary I would likely have been killed on the spot. Maccas knew that and it’s the only reason I had walked out with just the cuts from my previous spars. I could afford to be cocky because I was riding on his coattails, but it didn’t hurt that I could follow through. 

~

“I’ve got to leave for a while Sebby, London town’s a -calling my name, Berlin too.” Jim said with his tea cup hovering centimetres from his lips, speaking to blow some of the heat off his hot caffeine.   
“Oh, when are we leaving?”   
“Just me, I told you this would happen, I’ve got to go on my own, besides, you’ve work to do here. I hear the boys are starting to look to you instead of McCauslin , is that so? “  
“I’m pretty sure he’s smarter than you think, he can see the tide shifting.”   
“We’ll keep him in mind then when regime change comes, think he’d be on ours?”  
“I think he knows how to survive, the man is nearly fifty and still in this business,he didn’t get here because he’s a dogsbody.”  
“Ah.” Jim actually bites into his toast, which is odd because his habits had become erratic, too much planning the future, not enough focus on the here and now. . “I found him by the way.”  
“Found who?”   
“Ryan Mclaughlin of course, d’ya know he’s married now, has a little girl of his own. Now, I don’t know about you, but that just turns my stomach.” it’s casual, the way he talks about it, what he’s implying, what I know he knows and yes it makes my viscera churn with just the thought of what he put me through. Just the possibility that he could be doing the same to his own flesh and blood, to anyone else at all makes me want to come out of my skin.

“Oh” I don’t know how else to respond. I was still getting used to my newly developed violent streak, yes he was on the top of my list of people who should die, I knew I’d be just fine knowing he was dead, I just wasn’t sure if I’d be just fine knowing I had been the one who killed him. 

“Whenever you’re ready of course, no rush, he won’t see it coming anyway.” Jim dismissed himself from the table and disappeared to pack his trunk.   
I sat at the mod little dining table we barely ever used, lit a cigarette and stared into the void. Any onlooker may have thought that I had gone into a petit mal seizure, with the way I became a statue. Of all the questions that filtered through my brain: Where did he live? Why hadn’t I asked Jim that right away? How old was his daughter? How did he meet his wife? What did he do for a living? Would he remember me? Had there been a lot of girls or was I, for some reason or another, special? Of all the questions that itched the inside of my skull the only one I could answer right away was : How do I want to kill him?

‘He won’t see it coming anyway’   
‘He won’t see it coming anyway’  
‘He won’t see it coming anyway’  
‘He won’t see it coming anyway’  
‘He won’t see it coming anyway’

 

It hurt, being away from Jim . But I reminded myself it was for a reason. We had empires to topple and rebuild in our own image. I had stupid sentimental flights of fancy, wondering if Jim was thinking of me as he went to sleep. I’ll never know if he thinks of me as I think of him, maybe he never did, maybe he always has. After the first few texts that received no response I stopped trying, I didn’t want to ruin a business deal because his phone went off or some other such nonsense. 

In the first week, I told myself he’d be back any day, that he would call me any minute. It was tiring, exhausting even, on top of having to keep up the act that I was unaffected. Everyone was suspicious, had an inkling, but neither Jim nor I ever gave into public displays of affection, I never called him anything but Boss or Sir and he only ever addressed me as Moran for business. Because of this I had to nonchalantly not care if he came back or not, make small talk with the boys about how glad I was that he was off my back - “Hell, I hope he’s out of the country, without him breathing down my neck I can pull at a pub for once.” I would say, or something like it, I fit in easily with most of the group, some weren’t so accepting. Thought I was a lesbian maybe, I didn’t really care as long as they didn’t cause me any trouble. 

By the end of the third week, mid-October,I had resigned myself to the fact that he was possibly dead, and that I would just be stuck in this life because I had no other choice. The term had already started at Cambridge, it was too late to show up now. So much for double firsts, or whatever my dreams had been. So much for any dream, I told myself, and the hollowness I had been portraying actually started to make space in my chest. I did everything on auto pilot, ate, drank, smoked, trained, ate drank, smoked, trained. It was an eerie reminder of the days that followed Fioalan’s death.  
I had no idea what I could expect, would I get word that he was okay from some random courier? Had he decided that I had served my purpose? He was so sweet the last minute I saw him, the thought that it had all been an act crept into my head. A little voice inside my head told me ‘He’s hired himself a proper bodyguard, and found himself a pretty blonde with a bubbly name like Chelsea, he’s not coming back.’ and I promptly told the little voice to shut the fuck up. Not that it listened, it was me after all and there is only so much you can do that’s logical when you’re hearing voices.   
I buried myself in work, figured if he was coming back to me I had better have something to prove I’d stayed the course. I was sick and tired of the hand to hand, now that I look back on it there was a definitely feeling of disappointment that I picked it up so quickly, that the challenge was going to have to be found elsewhere, at least I was ready. No one would take me on in a challenge with any weapon at close range after Neck was released from the hospital and started telling people I was a psycho - which was all well and good, exactly what I had wanted really. 

I remember the day I first picked up a handgun with the type of fondness people remember their first child being born. It was a Sig Sauer P226, and the minute I had it in my grasp the weight of it in my hand felt right. It felt like an extension to myself I hadn’t known was missing. I named it Raphael, mostly out of spite that the men I worked with insisted on giving their weapons overused and over sexualised female names like ‘Lola’ or ‘Roxxy’, partly because I had always loved biblical references, and found it dichotomous to name it as such. 

Raphael and I had a date with the range later that day, and he was such a gentleman. Having never fired a gun, it took me about half an hour to get used to the kick back, to figure out to brace myself for it, which seemed a thing so menial I couldn’t understand why it didn’t come naturally. As I’ve mentioned, I had seen far to many action movies to have a real outlook on how to properly use a gun. I just wanted to shoot something. It was Maccas who told me to shoot with both eyes open. He said I had beginner's luck because I never missed at least some portion of the target, even when I had started out and my aim was deplorable and I was squinting. After two days on the range I was consistently hitting within the inner two circles. Then Maccas joked it was a gift. I suppose I’m not an internationally known sharp shooter because I don’t have a predisposition to the task. It took me two weeks to get my very first bullseye, and let me just tell you, nothing, not even sex, not even any drug you can imagine is better than a spot on shot. It’s a heady feeling, even when it’s just a sheet of paper down the line from you, but the feeling when it’s a person, well. It makes my blood run cold and then pyretic, it makes me salivate a little bit in a way I know is an entirely unhealthy response to death. Knowing it was me, and it wasn’t me is rapturous.   
I suppose now that Maccas was right, I had a talent. I wanted to take it further. Hand guns are all well and fine, I’d never go anywhere without one these days. But I knew I needed more. More fire power, more of a challenge, more violent capability.   
My first rifle wasn’t fabulous, had to be cleaned over and over and over again to get it back in working order. But with the butt on my shoulder and it’s long muzzle in my hand I knew I’d finally found a position that I was meant for, this was how my muscles were structured to be, a place I could call comfortable and capable. People talk about finding their calling, knowing they wanted a doctor or a solicitor from an early age. I had wanted to be an historian, and now I find I’m making it rather than lecturing over it. It feels like I’ve shot more rounds than I’ve taken breaths for that matter. And, yes, Raphael is still with me. I never use him. Sentiment.


	7. Non, je ne regrette rien (No Regret)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim returns and the fun begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A giant thanks to:  
> http://suchhypocrates.tumblr.com/  
> who aided me with some French translations. Just because my characters speak several languages doesn't mean I speak all of them too!

Jim took up all the space on our oversized lounger in the sitting room. He was like a liquid, expanded to fill the area he was allotted. On his back, smoking like a chimney, he was inhaling as I walked in and to me looked more an apparition than a man. He looked at me, flashed a slash of a smile and then started blowing smoke rings. So, at least, I gathered he’d been thinking of me, practicing in his time away.   
“Be ready for dinner at eight o’clock sharp Seb.” and then he ashed on the floor.  
Six and a half weeks, no word, no texts, no fucking emails. Six and a half weeks and the first thing out of his mouth isn’t even an icebreaker, not even a hello, it’s an order by his tone and nothing else.   
I stood, silent. My mind reeled, he was back but he wasn’t, no, not really. He kicked off his shoes, leather with a high polish that I’d never before seen, and hung his knees over the arm rest. He slung his feet like a child, gazing to the ceiling as though his toxic halo could be a universe. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to ignore me or if it wasn’t an effort at all. I felt crushed, felt excavated. I dropped my rifle bag and didn’t care about the delicacy of the equipment inside. It wasn’t a defiant act, it was defeated. I shuffled my way upstairs, stripping off as I went, pushing art frames along the staircase askew as I ascended. Walking into the bedroom I left a trail of GSR speckled clothing in my wake.   
When I got out of the shower I walked to our closet. It had been totally rearranged in my absence. All of our clothing had been put in neatly labeled boxes. ‘DISGUISES’ - Jim’s scrawl.   
Half of the thing was occupied by suits which simply reeked of pomp, shantung silk and tightly woven tweed in dark, bold, power colours. Actually, it was more than half. Matching shoes, Italian leather or English and hand-stitched, sat under each suit. He’d not have to re-wear an ensemble for months. The portion of the closet allotted to me had very little variety, mostly black, mostly breathable fabrics. That became my uniform.   
Hanging centre-stage was a crimson garment bag with a note on it.  
‘Wear this -JM’  
As though I wouldn’t know who wrote the note. I unzipped the bag and then laughed until my eyes were watering and my lungs burnt. The deepest emerald satin dangled from a sleek wooden hanger, it was accented by small black beads and baubles across the collar. It was elegant, the type of thing you’ve seen celebrities wear to red carpet events. I looked for a tag, for a brand and found none. I dropped my damp towel to the floor and slipped the dress over my head, it fit like a glove, I couldn’t help running my hands over my hips to feel the slickness. The sleeves were to my wrists, a straight line ran across my collar bones and plummeted down my back. I stared at my toes peeking out from under the long scalloped edge.   
“Do you know how big a chance I took?.” Jim said, leaning on the wainscotting of the walk-in.   
He was still smoking and I mused that maybe he had materialised from the haze surrounding him. The sight of him took my breath away. Sure, with his new line of work his fashion sense had stepped up to the sort of Urban Nouveau Riche of slim fitting suits that made him look like a Mod and that had taken some getting used to. I , honestly, had liked him wearing too long, too loose shapeless jeans, enjoyed seeing him walk around in just his boxers and in my Cure t-shirts with the faded face of Robert Smith plastered across his chest. I really did miss him in the Empire chair, ruffled hair and tea in hand. He took to wearing suits as though he were born in them. But there, supporting himself on the intricate trim of the doorway, he was a picture out of a classic leading man. He’s got the features for it, the distinction of large emotive eyes and the ability to convey sentences with an expression. I could feel the flush galloping up my neck and setting in my ears like a burning rash. He was in a tuxedo, and I don’t mean a penguin suit. It was a deep azure, so dark a blue it was almost black or maybe it was pitch black but portions of it reflected cyan like a magpie’s wings. He was clad in the starkest white under his jacket, everything was so crisp that it looked as if his bowtie could nick the underside of his jaw and draw blood. I had an image flash through my mind of the sartorial masterpiece covered in crimson. His shirt lacked the ruffles and pleats I had always associated with that style of suit. The waistcoat had mother of pearl buttons and Albert chain with a St. George’s Cross hung to the left side of it’s closure. His hair slicked back, not a strand out of place. He took my breath away, and I quite literally felt like I was suffocating until he raised his eyebrows expecting an answer and I realised I’d lost myself in the detail of his visage in an instant. I barely gathered myself to respond. I took the dress off, felt like I wasn’t meant to be in it.   
“Oh? On what?”  
“That your face wouldn’t be injured.”  
“I thought you liked my trophies” I pouted  
“Oh, I do. Yes, I do.” he scanned my body with a smile, I could see he was imagining all the bruises my ribs had bore before  
“But, we’re going on a field trip and I doubt our hosts would approve.”   
“Ah, should’ve know this wasn’t just for me.”  
“You love it though.” he said, proud of himself “Designed it myself y’know.”  
“It’s alright I suppose.” I peaked over my shoulder like a Vargas girl  
“How’s your French?”  
“Comme un naitf.” I reply coolly and Jim just smiles.  
I sat down to the vanity, nervous for once. I’d never gone to cotillions, especially didn’t go to any dances with Jim. I wasn’t much for make-up, he never seems to mind that; at best my hair was braided back into a thick rope, if I could manage it.   
Jim whistled and a man came into the room with two heavy canvas bags, one over each shoulder .  
“Richard Berlin, we’re going to make you ab-fab darling” he said flamboyantly. Jim just smirked at his voice and my confused expression.   
“Hair first, turn around honey. Oh my god, most women would kill for these locks. I mean kill!” He went to work and I sat dumbfounded, a child, a petulant child only rebelling in whines and eyerolls as he stacked my hair with pins and sealed it all under a plasticky spray that made me wonder if I’d ever get it out. I remember being thankful not to have a sensitive scalp.   
“Okay, no mirror. I want the reveal to be a surprise.” Berlin pushed on shoulders to spin me around until all I could see was his face and his hands too close to my eyes and Jim drinking amber out of a tumbler, looking around amused like a royal with a jester. It was all cream and powders, pencils and liquids being painted over the line of my eyelashes. My face felt heavy, I was worried that her was plastering cosmetic on me like a clown, like a bad job at a funeral. I glanced back to Jim while something was being done to my eyebrows. He had a look on his face I’d seen before - admiration. Although the last time I’d seen it had been on my knees in front of him after hospitalising a man.   
“Lips,” Berlin pulled a dark purple tube from his bag, the colour was mortifying, so bold “now don’t worry it’ll stay on all night.” he giggled and I knew what he was implying.   
Whatever he brushes over my lips is tacky and tastes like perfume until he glosses over it with some sort of clear sealer.  
“Voila!” he threw his hands up in triumph.   
I turn around to find a woman I’ve never seen staring back at me. She’s got hair reminiscent of a forties starlet. Her eyes looks bigger than my own and smoky - like Bette Davis with the sultry outline of Greta Garbo.   
Jim had sauntered over and clapped a hand down on Berlin’s shoulder. Richard flinched minutely and fear played across his face as bright as day. I wandered then, what Jim had on him. I know now, that he has more dirty secrets on the people he interacts with than the Ukraine has loam, and really it’s always been that way.   
“Simply gorgeous.” Jim says staring at me but waving his hand dismissively at the cosmetologist.   
When we were alone he extended his hand, beckoning me to him. I stood and did my best to place my bruised fingers into his like a lady would. He kissed the back of my hand and looked up at me from under mile long lashes. With a quiet reverence he encased my hand in sleek black stain, then the other.  
“For the lady” his tone should’ve seen mawkish but it wasn’t. He bowed and withdrew a hinged case from his breast pocket. My eyes must’ve nearly dislodged themselves from their sockets when he revealed the jewelry inside. White metal, I ‘d later be told was platinum, in scrolls over emerald upon emerald. A bracelet and a necklace, holding a diamond as it’s centerpiece.   
Without removing his gaze from mine the gems are placed on me. I kissed him hungrily, hoping Berlin was right and my deep purple lips wouldn’t smear over our faces. I wanted to own his mouth, his eyes had put fire in my belly. He pulled back and was insistent on a more gentle caress of lip on lip. His phone chimed.  
“That’ll be our ride.”  
It wasn’t a limousine, I’d been expecting that. The M45 was impressive. A man in a much cheaper suit than Jim’s stepped out of the car and opened the door for me. There was a slight bulge under his left arm, an equipped chauffeur. He tried to keep his eyes lowered but I noticed the attractive blonde’s glance stay on my hips. Once in the car Jim sat angled behind the wheel so he could look at me. The man who drove the car had disappeared into the skip by our condo. His approving smile was beatific. I was beaming on the outside and wrestling with myself internally.   
“Do you prefer me like this?” there was a sadness in my voice, knowing I couldn’t always pull this off, especially if I were to be in the business of protecting Jim. I hadn’t even done this myself, I had help, not from a girlfriend, hired help. My stomach sank in the moments it took Jim to reply.   
“Bae, it’s just a clever disguise. Although, yes, you’ve stunned me. I collected all the components but could not have imagined the whole would be so visually jolting.” He lit his cigarette and exhaled in a slow sinuous line before handing it over to me and lighting himself another.   
“So,” I would settle for the politician’s answer and not press him, not after being apart for so long, didn’t want to cause a rift that I perceived existed at any rate “ what are these clever disguises for exactly?” I over emphasised his previous words.   
“We’re meeting business contacts. A man I can start my overseas venture with, he’s Parisian and likely to speak ill of me in his mother tongue knowing that I am not fluent, and not knowing that you are.”   
“Oh, Jim, comme c'est sournois”   
“I’ve no clue what you’ve just said. But, when we get done here, I want to hear you scream it while I fuck you.” he leans over as he says it, barely keeps his eyes on the road, inhales along my neck and skates an untouching hand along the line of my body.   
“Oui, mon cœur.”   
The rest of the drive is full of glances and half smiles. Those smiles that we share, where both of us are predators and both of us are prey are what I live for nowadays when we’re in mixed company. When we finally arrive its to a banquet hall packed with well dressed new and old money - each side throwing the other disingenuous gestures of praises that barely veil aspurtion. Those born to money assume those who worked for it are beneath them, those who earned it think the silver spoon fed toffs aren’t worth the designer brands they flaunt.   
Jim, though, no one can figure him out. He carries himself with power, walks so that he parts seas of people without a sigh. No one here knows that until recently he came from a home where income went to whiskey over milk, Jim came from hunger, from fear. From that dark and lowly spot this man who was controlling the room with a bat of his eyelashes was born. Old money thought he was one of them because of how dismissive he was of the catering staff, a habit of being raised by ‘the help’. New money assumed he was one of their ilk simply because he was so young and sleek, so daring in his sartorial choices, he made bold decisions like drinking his Louis Jadot Bâtard Montrachet with tartar canapes.   
“Oh James, you’ve made it.” a man with silver temples opens his arms and approaches, leaving his cronies behind “And with your wife?” he asks as he takes my hand to kiss it through fine textile, eyeing the richness dripping from my wrist.  
“Oh no, nothing of the sort, yet.” Jim winks at me, lying through his teeth as easily as he breathes. There is no intention in his last word, and through I know it’s an act, the truth of it thuds somewhere deep in my chest. I’m not wife material, he’d be a poorly husband, but that’s not what I want is it? Well it’s good enough to pretend sometimes, give into the old multiverse theory and imagine that we are married and normal, or engaged to be, or even entertaining such a banal idea.   
“Enchante Mademoiselle.”   
I stare back at him blankly.   
“Sorry, we aren’t really Francophones.” Jim fills in the awkward silence so effortlessly the man accepts it without question.  
“Well, it is my pleasure to be making your acquaintance” Trudeaux offers his hand in that expected posh way men do at parties like this one.  
“No sir, clearly it is all mine.” I lilted back.  
“I’ll get us refreshments if you promise not to run off with Mr. Trudeau while I’m gone.”   
“No promises James.”   
We exchange a wink that only means anything to the two of us and nothing that anyone else interprets.  
Mr. Trudeau makes idle chatter, trying and failing to impress me. I may not have been worldly then, but I was also not a wide-eyed darling. I smile and laugh all the same when it is appropriate and when Jim returned the three of us mingle in with Mr. Trudeaux’ friends.   
They immediately start talking business in paper thin code. Although amidst the other conversations it was innocuous.  
“It’s so hard to find a good ski instructor in Paris” the fattest one of them says and Jim flashes his teeth with the playful reply “Oh but, the slopes are only getting higher. I think I could recommend one, otherwise the price of lessons may very well rise”  
“I’ll take that under advisement” Trudeau interjects.  
I play lost to all of it, butting in “James, I didn’t know we were planning a trip to Paris anytime soon. You know I don’t like the cold.”  
“Oh pet, no need to worry.” he gives eyes of ‘she’s hopeless’ to his business associates then scans by body with ‘but she’s pretty’ eyes and it’s laughs all around.  
We are all playing a game, but there are only two players in each game and the rest don’t know they’re pawns on our board because they think we’re having a go at checkers.   
“Trudeau, comment vas-tu ?”  
Jim turns to me as this unknown Frenchman approaches our target. Jim brushes a hand across my cheek as a loving reminder of the mission at hand.  
“Est-ce que c'est le bon ?” the stranger inquires and I start listening in while sipping my champagne.  
“Oui, et il est un idiot, ce sera tellement facile.”  
The men gesture each other as though they are catching up. It is well practiced and must’ve been done a hundred other times when their native language came in handy over unsuspecting actual imbeciles.   
“En décembre nous nous assurerons qu'il tombe. Il ne nous causera plus de problèmes et tout le territoire d'O'Connell sera le nôtre.” Trudeau jokes to the other man then swivels to us “I am so sorry again, habit, nature if you will” of that I am sure. “This is my partner, Mr. Bourdain, I know it is rude to speak out of English in front of you, but he is a bore.” Trudeau pats Bourdain's belly and he grunts while reaching out to shake hands.   
“James” he accepts the hand “and this is Ancilla.”  
“We were just discussing a party we are going to have in December, you should join us.”  
“Oh, I thought I recognised a word!” I feign excitement, I had understood every word they said, perfectly.   
“You’ll be a french speaker in no time” I’m assured. “Ton petit copain va tomber, mais ne t'inquiètes pas, moi je serai là pour te rattraper.”  
He smiles at me and I want to break his nose right there, but I restrain myself and blush instead.   
“Oh I’ve no idea what you’ve just said but it all sounds so lovely” I submissively cock my head to the left and give the most innocent smile I can conjure.   
“James may I?” Trudeaux looks to the dancefloor  
“I’m really not the one you ought to be asking”  
“Yes, Monsieur, you may” I stumble over the honourific but it’s given with a curtsy and accepted.  
As soon as we are hand in hand I have to remember myself to let him lead, to put myself to this locum work - I’m not me, apparently tonight I am Ancilla and I’m just the dainty girl on James’ arm.  
“Do you work with my James often?”  
“We’ve only just begun.”   
“”I’ve no inclination for the business he does, at the office all times of day, so secretive, such an Irishman in that respect. But it affords me this so I’ll abide him.” there is some twirling and fancy step changing “What is it that you do?”  
“Je pourrais te le dire, mais après tu le saurais.”  
“You must know that just makes a girl swoon”  
And then, to my not-so-surprise he slides his hand a bit too far down my hip to be proper, pulls me tighter than necessary for the lazy meandering waltz the orchestra has changed to. However, to my aplomb he starts revealing his plan of action regarding James, the exact nature of their business and just what he thinks of the both of us. All in French of course, languid and lackadaisically. I lull my head side to side as if I believe I am being serenaded. I don’t get the really dirty detail but I get more than the gist of his reach, more than Jim needs to be told in order to stop it and exact his revenge.   
The four piece serenading the room takes an intermission. Mr. Trudeau looks thoroughly pleased with himself only because he has no idea what he’s just done, but is swallowing hard at the loss of my body contact. Trying to hide his partial arousal by bowing.  
“So light on your feet” I compliment.  
“Non, Mademoiselle, all of the grace is yours.” he turns as he see James approach.  
James comes up to me, his face pure civility and only I know there is something vicious painted in his bourbon brown eyes. It was jealousy and it was beautiful. Beautiful to know I was wanted, so wanted that our little game had riled him against his better judgement.   
“I’m sorry lovie, the drink has gone straight to my head . Drive us home won’t you?”   
“The only characteristic of our fine heritage you were not gifted with.”  
I braced him, without need, in the crook of my arm. He was warm, the crisp fabric of his tuxedo bent and pleated under the compression and he smelt of that teakwood soap he’d taken to over his cheap shave cream.   
“Sorry for departing so soon, again sometime?”  
“Well,” he only hesitates because Jim is within earshot.  
“Say yes this instant Mr.Trudeau and I’ll leave my dance card open.” I batted at him with the hand not supporting Jim.   
He agrees and Jim and I make for the door. He tosses the Audi S8 keys in my direction and I catch them a millimeter before they hit my face.   
“So why are we really leaving?”  
“Work.”  
“So you’ve got a meeting then?”  
“We’ve got a meeting love, we.”  
“It’s my first day on the job and I’m meant to intimidate someone in this get up?”  
“Oh bae, you’ll knock ‘em dead.”  
We settle into the car and he unbuttons his jacket as his sits, manners he picked up from books or O’Connell, certainly not his upbringing.   
“I’ve got a gift for you when we get there.” he sing-songs at me  
“Aren’t you just full of charity tonight?”  
“Gotta make up for all my sins somehow don’t I?”  
“However shall I repay you?” sarcasm dripping from my lips  
“In kind of course.” He flashes me a grin I’d never seen before and I didn’t know what it meant then. I know now it’s his anticipatory smile, means he’s excited to see me work.   
“Head to the shop, our client should already be waiting if our driver’s done his job.”  
I go into autopilot, light up a cigarette and fly through the orange lit streets of Dublin. When I park he leans over the gear shaft, takes my hands off the wheel to put them on his thighs, directing my fingers towards the well tailored seam between them.  
“Can you work with your gloves on?”  
“They’re tight enough, I can try. Depends on what I’m doing.”  
“Come on then, I’ve got everything waiting.”  
All the lights are off when we enter, save for the ill illumination of a bare bulb in a room off the main corridor.   
“Stop right there, don’t move a muscle.” Jim tells me in a mockingly serious tone before disappearing into the blackness, his suit giving him more cover than he needs. “I meant to save this for later, but…” he called from his office.   
He reappeared in front of me so quickly I almost didn’t know he was there until he took my hand in his.  
“Here” the way he says it is shy, I’d not heard that tone in ages, like he’s not sure if what he’s giving me is something I’d want or I’d refute. “I just couldn’t wait.”  
It’s just a white cardboard box, didn’t look like anything special. I opened it and the ruffle of tissue whispered a quiet sshuuuushh. His unfathomable eyes bore into me, darker than usual but the flicker of that sick bulb caught in them. Tiny windows staring back. In the box is a stiletto, glinting in the light, catching silver runs of brightness along it’s blade. The handle is creamy, looks soft and buttery but is hard and cold to my grasp and I simply let the dull packaging slip to my feet.   
“It’s beautiful.”  
“Ivory” he says over me “antique.” then he bites his lips in that way where his tongue sticks out a bit and rocks on his heels.   
“Jimmy why?”  
“I missed you, ya know,it’s a, oh I dunno.”  
It’s funny how often I see glimpses of my Jimmy from Leixlip.   
“Missed you too.” I kissed him on the side of his mouth, not even his lips, not quiet the cheek.  
“Show time, love.” he says and his fingers mimic a firework exploding.  
I follow him into the poorly lit room. There is a man, gagged and bound to a chair. He immediately starts muffled pleas for release. He assumes two such nicely attired folks are also nicely moraled - assumptions are dangerous.   
“Oh my God! You Poor man!” Jim exclaims, rushes to his side and pretends to try and fiddle with the knots “Dah-ling,” he stretches the word obscenely “help him, won’t you?” he instructs, waving apropos of the gag between the man’s teeth. I remove it and brush down his cheek like his mother might. Here I feel not one ounce of nurturing.   
“This man, O’Connell, he had me kidnapped.” the tied man rattles of “please you’ve gotta help me, please, he’s going send one of his lackeys-”  
Without Jim’s order I strike him. I make up for the gentility in the satin gloves by putting all my weight into my shoulder so you can still hear the dull thud of his own cheek against his molars as his head turns from my hand.  
“No one calls my Boss a lackey.”   
Jim hums and starts playing music from his phone, Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique, he’s always had a flair for the dramatic. He pours himself a drink while I’m circling our now fear stricken captive.   
“What are you going to do to me?” he asks turning his face Jim, eyes beginning to water. And you know it’s really no fun when they cry right off, where’s the challenge in that?   
“Oh me, nothing, don’t you worry, I wouldn’t lay a finger on you.”   
“Then let...” but he’s cut off before he can finish, Jim stands so abruptly he takes the air out of the room, takes the back of the other man’s chair in his hands, tips it back a bit, brings his face right along side our client’s and whispers  
“But her, och Lord, I’d worry.”  
I’m just standing there, showcasing the knife in my hands like a game show assistant or a beauty queen contestant. I think I’m rather funny at times.   
Jim circles back to me almost dancing.  
“Remember how to skin a rabbit?” he asks and I nod baring my canines, remembering Spring hunts with my father “Think you can skin a rat?”  
I can still vividly remember unbuttoning the man’s shirt, my eyes not leaving his - they were so watery and full of excuses, his breath was quick and uneven. It felt intimate, like a strip tease, and not the kind one pays for at a sleazy bar, the kind you get at home when you’ve been very good and your lover wants to give you something. I was putting on a rather good show for Jim afterall.   
I don’t remember when the man passed out, only, I do remember that my first cut along his clavicle gave me purchase to remove the skin over his heart. My bequest worked wonders between dermis and muscle, splitting fat as I would on a steak.   
“Should I kill him?” I ask dangling a shapeless piece of flesh between my fingers, disdainfully.   
“As much as I would like to see you do that, and Sebby I really would” Jim rose to his feet, adjusted himself in his trousers “we’re only meant to send a message. Some bullshit about file sharing our project or some such, probably shouldn’t have done this much, but well. When it’s my choice, we’ll never leave ‘em breathing.” he practically sang the last word.   
“So where exactly are we posting this message?”  
He simply waggled his finger at me, bringing his phone up to his ear.  
“We need pick-up” is all he said before sliding the phone back into his breast pocket. “Moran, we’re too high up for transport.” his tone was chiding as though I should’ve known. He angles out his elbow indicating I’m to take it. I’m careful not to rest my blood soaked satin fingers on his sleeve; but then he presses his hand to mine, forcing it to splay on his forearm so that he is courting blood between his fingertips. He grazed my face from cheekbone to chin with the same hand and I could feel the wet viscous red slowly drying against my already painted face as he smiled and sighed.   
You have to understand that most couples prove their love in vows, in little acts of kindness with dates to mundane places. But I had, have, proved my loyalty through major acts of mutilation, disfiguration and was rewarded with glowing affection more radiant that a princess cut solitaire diamond could ever show. I’d never felt more proud than I did in that moment, hoped he had never felt so loved. We were growing, transforming, evolving into ourselves and the world couldn’t hold us back.   
“Je veux que tu me baises maintenant” I whispered into his ear and then licked his lobe  
“Keep talking like that and I’ll not be able to get us home.”  
“Bon d'accord, je vais attendre.” I murmured, squeezed his arse, leaving a dark print in my hand’s wake, then sashayed to my side of the car. A wicked, teasing grin in my eyes and his eyes across my throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> French to English in the order that they appear in the story.  
> 1\. Like a native  
> 2\. Oh ,Jim,so sneaky!  
> 3\. Yes, love  
> 4\. Trudeau, how are you?  
> 5\. Is this the one?  
> 6\. Yes, and he's an idiot, it'll be so easy.  
> 7\. In December we'll make sure he takes the fall. He'll be out of the picture and all of O'Connell's territory will be ours.   
> 8\. Your boyfriend is going to take a little fall, don't worry, I'll be there to catch you.  
> 9\. I could tell you, but then you would know.   
> 10\. I want you to fuck me now.   
> 11\. Oh fine, I'll wait.


	8. comeuppance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a wholly pornographic reunion between Jim and Sebine and a nice little murder.

Dublin streets stay busier than one would imagine late into the night. Although the drive was more than entertaining, I wanted to get home. I all but fell through our front door upon arrival and then Jim was supporting me, practically lifting me off the ground in his eagerness.

I still had the stiletto tucked in my garter, brought it deftly up  as Jim wrapped my legs around his waist, bunching the satin of my gown up at my thighs, he pressed us up against the foyer wall. He is deceptively strong for a man of his size, not that I’m judging of course, I am deceptive in much the same way and ten fold.

“How much?” I gesture to his bow tie with the knife point.

“One hundred and sixty five pounds” he’s smug in his expenditure. I lick at his jawline, take what slack I can get to worry between my teeth.

“How much do you want me?” and the only reply I get is him rutting up against me.

I bring the blade to the accessory and cut it from his neck with a flick of the wrist.

“One sixty five” I snicker as I run my blood soiled gloves down the purity of his shirt, previous fantasy flashing through my mind, I begin to dislodge buttons in rapid succession, pulling apart every layer that keeps him from me. I stand on my own again so that I’ve got the leverage to tug his shirt out from under his trousers. His waistcoat is still in the way and I need his skin under my bloody gloves.

“Tell me.” I gesture to the accessorised layer between his jacket and shirt.

“Two hundred.”

I smile when his chest is bared to me. In the blink of an eye I’ve got him face against the wall, my hand  on the back of his skull to keep him there.

“Three fortnights and you come back wearing rent. Bon, I missed you, but Jaime, you’re going to pay.” his eyes slide shut at the threat. Lashes sweeping low along his too prominent cheekbones.

“How much?” I run the stiletto between his shoulder blades which are like wings under his suit jacket.

“One thousand eight hundred ninety five, bespoke.” and he’s pleading as I start to separate the spinal seam.

“So what’s that about two and a quarter all together? Am I worth it?” his jacket falls off his shoulders in halves, the loud clack-clack of buttons against the wood floor is almost jarring. But nothing could have taken me out of that moment.

“Oui.” he gasps.

I fall to my knees and run my face against the back of his left thigh, biting the sensitive flesh behind the joint through thin trousers. I know that the extent of his French is yes, no and please. It suffices for the night.

“Je te ferai me supplier”.

“Och, Sebby, Jesus.”

We never made it out of the foyer. I never made it out of my dress, nor he out of his trousers fully.

“Il n'existe pas un mot pour ce que je veux te faire.”

It was fast and it was dirty, I vaguely worried about the cleanliness of the berk’s blood I was pushing through my sweat soaked fringe and then into Jim’s mouth to control his gaze, using his jaw line a reign. It was a quiet worry, too quiet to speak over my inner monologue of yes, more, now.

“Plus forte.” as I rocked against him “Fuck Jaime, harder dammit.”

He arched his back off the floor balancing on his shoulders to buck his hips higher. On top of him, looking down at him, his beautiful waxen skin was pale and clammy with sweat under my palms;he was the most beautiful sight. He rolled us abruptly and I locked my ankles around his hips giving him only space enough space to continue pistoning into me. He came with my name on his lips and his pupils blacking out those molasses eyes.

Panting, heaving, he collapsed on me, sweat between our bodies soaking and darkening the emerald still on my body to a rich mossy black. For minutes our syncopated breath was the only sound inside the house, the street traffic a whirring buzz that slowly came back into my senses.

“That suit was mine Sebby, made just for me you understand.” he huffs out, face still buried in my neck. “But, anyone could have that suit made for them if they had to money. But not you, you are mine and mine alone.” he kisses the sensitive spot below my ear, a little weakness only he knows about. “I fucking own you Sebine Moran.”

It’s biting, it’s archaic, recalls slavery, and I feel like an object. He is my master, even from before the moment he admits it aloud, I was destined to follow his rule. I have my own agency, have my own mind, my own power. I am the Holy Spirit, he’s the Father and the world burning at our feet is the Son we have borne to pay for our sins.

He comes up, supporting himself on shaky arms, cracks his neck like a zipper colliding then smiles. Jim sat back on his heels, soles of well cobbled leather against his ruddy arse. I was exhausted, worn out from riding him, from skinning a man, from faking niceties at the gala; didn’t bother trying to close my legs with him still between my knees. The tickle of his fingers ghosting over my cunt were a shock.

“Do you know how beautiful a sight you are?” he asks pressing in slightly “My come just dripping out of you. A biological marker, unmistakably me and you.” he almost whispers, bringing his semen slicked fingers to his lips, painting it on like balm. He growled, an actual animal growl, inhuman. Then his mouth was on me. I was frozen in the moment. He’d never paid back on the favour, and now he was hungrily lapping his release out of me.

It’s funny when you’re young how self-conscious some of the best sex acts can make you feel. I know I was nervous. How did I taste? How did he like the taste? When was the last time I’d shaved? Could I finish like this?

Just because Jim had never eaten me out didn’t mean he was slowed in the task. He was not that same boy I’d kissed under streetlamps outside of a pub we’ll never return to who couldn’t tell where to put his tongue. He kissed my labia the way he kissed my mouth now, exploring with his tongue, ravishing, building up and teasing. And when he nibbled and sucked at my clit I was unsure whether to sigh or scream.

“Jim, there,” gasp “don’t you”  keen “dare stop.” shudder.

He was unrelenting and I came, rutting like a bitch in heat against his face. My vision went white behind my eyelids. Then all of the most vivid hues, like an oil slick lit under headlights, even when I opened my eyes colourful spots painted my vision. It was so strong it almost hurt, a deep ache that went straight to the bone.

Since then I have become a firm believer in the mantra - oral sex is better after all other sex. When we’ve the time, Jim is happy to fulfill that ideology.

We brushed our teeth,  but did not shower. There is a certain creature comfort and pride in going to bed marred by the genetics of your partner.

We woke up hazy, my hair still somehow mostly pinned and my lipstick pristine, although the mascara left me looking like an extra in the pool scene from Rocky Horror Picture Show. I rolled over to Jim and had a moment to take him in. All to myself. The ferocity I saw in his expression the previous night was gone. He looked younger, like the last year and a half hadn’t just swept by us, like he hadn’t grown into his criminal skin in that time. He’s my Jimmy who makes the best toasted cheese and reads ancient Persian military histories for fun. He’s only my Jimmy when he’s sleeping. His mouth agape, one arm thrown over his forehead. I nestle my face into his armpit, smelling the rich earthly heat from his downy hair. When I carefully lay my hand on his sternum to feel the rise and fall of his breath, he snuffles.

He is handsome, in a way that makes my chest tight and I can never explain why.

“Jim, wake up, Bon.”

“Nah” he yawns back at me.

I crawl over him, holding his hips between my knees.

“Jaime, je te veux.” I say as I’m snaking my way down onto his morning erection.

Six weeks he was gone and I know I had him last night, I know it’s a needy thing to do right off. But I’m needy.

“Uh feck, Sebby.” that rough morning voice spurred into action completely erases the façade he had going last night. He doesn’t bother opening his eyes, even moving his arm, but he thrusts up to meet me. I don’t last long, trembling with his hair caught to my lips. He lets me ride through it but, I’m exhausted on the other side of my orgasm. A lazy handjob on my part is taken over by himself and he finishes much the way he would if I weren’t there at all.  

“Bonjour.” I roll to mash our bodies together my chest to his side, take his face into my hands and kiss his nose. He finally moves his arm and blinks, smiling at me.

“They plan to take you out before December, they want you to take a fall for their deal, burn bridges with O’Connell and ensure you’re the one holding the bag when it all goes down. I’m not exactly sure how they’re planning to do it, but I know I’m not going to let it happen.”

“Je sais” he replies smirking

“Wha, when did you learn French?”

“While I was gone.”

“So you, you just wanted to hear me speak it didn’t you?”

“Only cos you make it sound so pretty.” he flourishes the last word with a trill

“Je sais.” I spit his words back at him jokingly.

We part out ways, each of us have business to take care of.

I end up at the range. Put my earbuds in, zone in on the steady beat - all my music is in 4:4, all the same tempo, just for this practice, the beat of my heart slows to match it, the heaviness of my breath. My L115A-3 is the perfect weight in my hands and against my shoulder. Breath in, breath out, both eyes open, shoot. Repeat.

When I finally bring the target in there’s just one hole in the centre, a bit wider than a single round, but giving no clue that fifteen have passed through the paper.

[Jim, I’m ready for him.]

I text. And I feel the sensation I have come to love fall over me, knowing I’m about to kill someone. It’s impolite to say that it’s like a warm blanket right out of the dryer - so I suppose I won’t. But it is.

“Heya, good on ya.” Maccas claps me on the back while he’s studying the target in my hands.

“Thanks.” we share a smile.

He’s honestly a good guy, I wanted to bring him over to our side - told myself eventually.

“Seen that guy who got worked over last night? Guy who did that must’ve been a goddamned surgeon.” he starts prattling.

My phone buzzes in my pocket.

[It’s planned. You have to wait four days. Plenty to do before then.-JM]

I think Jim must’ve been impressed, must’ve had some pride in me. Rumors began about a new recruit that had been born in a mental institution, people all agreed that the man who had done the skinning job sure was talented with a knife. I overheard the boys at O’Connell’s talking about this man who had been hired in to send a message. All I did was smirk, no use in ruining the guise of hearsay. For all they knew a man from Belfast came in for a night, did his work and left just as quickly. The longer I could keep my name or Jim’s name out of their mouths the better. The longer we had to build.

Four days came and went, none of what happened in them was of any consequence. It’s similar to looking forward to going on holiday - the days right before are all a blur of anticipation and nothing else. I’m sure I still slept and ate, smoked and drank, drove and worked in those four days, they didn’t actually disappear, but it’s a fugue state that I’m not too bothered by.

The morning came, I woke up sharply at four, Jim had told me where I needed to be by six, and though I could’ve slept til five and still made it I couldn’t wait any longer to get there. I dressed in casual attire, just jeans and a t-shirt, my usual non-unique way of dressing, pulled back my hair and smoked one cigarette in the flat before I set out. I only drove the car to near the location, and not our car, one bought just to be ditched. I grabbed my rifle, you’d be surprised how easily one can break down a sniper range rifle and store it in an incognito rucksack. I do it all the time now, but the nervous energy of being out in daylight, with such a highly illegal weapon on my back for the first time almost made me nauseous. It probably would have made me throw up if I hadn’t been running on such a sense of purpose. Nothing was going to stop me. I easily picked the lock on the exterior stairwell, even doing that much had me terrified that I’d be caught. I was alone on this one, if anyone came after me that could be it. Of course I only thought I was alone, Jim had a team in place to watch over me but I was oblivious to that fact at the time, didn’t find out about it until years later.

Rooftops before sunrise are much colder than you might assume, and when I reached mine I shivered but quickly blocked it from my mind, I needed to be in my head not just my body.

I set up my rifle and took a second to get used to scoping things that were moving, I found myself tracking birds thinking that if I wanted to be a prize shooter I could be a champion at skeet. By the time I had settled into my position I still had over an hour to wait for my target to come into my sights. People talk about the zen, the calm before the storm, the stillness you have to be in before you hit a mark. For the most part I agree, for every job I’ve done since it’s been there. But in the time I had before I saw his auburn head come jogging down that path, all I could do was think of why I was killing him. See that’s the thing, if you’re invested it’s harder to get to that comfortable hollow space.

In my mind I was nine again, except this time I had a gun and I was going to make it all better. It felt like time travel, I was going back to save myself and the world from his existence.

****

_Mam and Da have just left for the annual faculty gala, all dressed up. It’s the first time I’ve seen my mother in such an ornate dress in a long time. They go on dates all the time, keeps the romance alive, but she was in a dark blue ball gown and her hair was pulled back. With her next to my father I thought my parents looked fit for a red carpet. Lise wasn’t available to watch me but Ryan would be here any minute and would I be alright for a moment, they really needed to head out - of course. When he arrived we had some friendly conversation about what it was like to be done with school, if he were going to university and a few books that he had read recently, much to his chagrin I had read them much earlier on. He told me I was more an adult than any of the other girls he had been with in school with, said I was nice. We made dinner, I can’t remember what now, funny how innocuous things like that are wiped from the ledger when the more important details are bright as day, as though they are happening in current time when I recall them. We settled on the couch, companionably close but with enough separation to be proper. He was wearing a soft dark brown jumper and khakis, I was in a dress it had small flowers on it, exactly the type of thing that a nine year old would wear, even had the tie in the back so it looked slightly like shoe laces running up my spine.  Flipping through the telly we found very little on, until we came to a channel with a French film. I had only just begun to learn the language, and looking back on it perhaps I clung so sharply to it because in the back of my mind it equated to my last moments of innocence and what I thought might be love. He didn’t speak it at all and I translated what little I could, but then the sex scene came and somehow we were lying on the settee, spooning like a couple and he was smoothing his hands over my square ribs and hips. At least he asked, is always what I tell myself. ‘Do you want to do what they’re doing? You know adults do it all the time when they’re together. It’s a very mature thing to do.’ How easily I played into that line of reasoning. I was old enough, I was smart enough, why didn’t adults ever listen to me? I wanted to be a grown-up, isn’t that what every child wants? We do not realise then, that when we are adults we will only ever wish to be children and never older, never senile and fragile but young and bright and brilliant again. The kissing wasn’t bad, the kissing I had done, girls kissed girls at sleeping parties, girls kissed boys on the playground under the slides, all of that made sense. When his hand snaked up under my dress my stomach flipped, lurched, it felt wrong, it felt weird.  I can’t actually describe properly how it felt, until I could.  When his fingers were replaced with his prick. Then it was just pain, the kissing had stopped, everything felt like burning pain, like I was torn in two, or still being torn into more pieces than I could count. I remember crying and trying desperately to not cry because he was above me, still hurting me in this way I didn’t understand, telling me to not cry. Because women don’t cry, women moan, women like this, he tells me. So I held my breath, I counted to one hundred and backwards to zero and did anything I could to not be in my body. I could still hear him, talking, panting, telling me how good I felt, how good I was. Then he stopped and I thought it was over, thought it was done and wondered why the hell adults thought anyone would want to do that. But we weren’t done, or rather Ryan wasn’t done. ‘Lick me’ he said and I ruffled my nose at the instruction. ‘Lick me, or I’ll tell your parents you made me do this with you.’ How could this, which I didn’t even enjoy, be my fault, how could he use that against me? But I felt, for some reason, that I should be ashamed, and if I could just keep him from talking. So I did, I closed my eyes and I licked him, from top to bottom, his hair felt like wire on my tongue, the texture of his scrotum - with it’s ridges and tightness ruined freshly scooped icecream for me forever. He held my face still with one hand, my cheeks pursed, mouth open and the salty sick taste he deposited there made me throw up on myself. He stood up, straighten himself out and sent me away, covered in my own sick. I showered and went to bed, but didn’t sleep. I heard my parents talk to him when they got home, he said I wasn’t feeling well, probably too much candy, I’d be fine in the morning. They paid him. They paid him and I died a little that night._

_****_

I shit you not, the world went still when I saw his hair bounce over the horizon as he jogged up the path. I saw him and he had no clue that the last set of eyes that would ever lay on him alive weren’t his wife’s, weren’t his daughter’s or anyone he knew or loved, they were mine. I know I was smiling too much, but I just couldn’t help it. One deep breath in, one deep breath out and he was gone. Clean shot, straight through The Apricot - a sweet spot for people like me, he went down with no grace, mid stride and as ungainly as a newly born giraffe. To be honest, I wasn't sure how I'd react to actually murdering someone. It is an odd mentality to not be taken aback by the gore of a man who's head has been blown apart - but knowing I did it somehow endeared the act to me. They say an assassins first murder is themselves, they kill the person they were. Well, I had just killed the man who had written himself into my gut with shame and hate, he made me who I was and I actually laughed. It was a full throated laugh, a laugh that made my eyes water and my sides ache as I was blindly taking apart my rifle and packing it back up. I texted for clean up and before I’m down the stairs his worthless body is off the street.

I’m in such a wholeheartedly good mood after I'm on the streets that I walk all the way back to our flat and smoke an entire pack. I’m singing show tunes, out of pitch and rhythm just because nothing seems like a better thing to do at the moment. And you know what? I couldn’t have been happier that I met a scrappy little kid in a bookshop in Leixlip.


	9. Listen While the World Burns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim takes what he wants, but he certainly has never gone after things which aren’t useful, and right then, I was that useless thing putting infinite distance between us. A bungee cord used for a hanging.

It had been weeks that I’d been floating around on the high of killing Ryan. It didn’t really solve anything but I felt so much better knowing his blood was on my hands. Well it wasn’t ever really, because Jim had enough contacts, enough worker bees that no one had to know what we’ve, what I’ve, done. No police officer would find a body strewn out on a jogging path like the rubbish he was. Nothing will ever be found in fact. A task so daunting is actually quite simple if you’ve got the money, the manpower and enough bathtubs full of lye in the countryside.   
My work continued within O’Connell’s ranks and the men started deferring to me as jobs became my purview to distribute. As Jim worked his way into O’Connell’s back pocket both of us reaped the benefits. Some new blood came in and I was the one patting the young buck on the back after he’s made his rounds through hand to hand. I’m the one who spoke first, I’m the one who led, who commanded. They seemed to have forgotten my sex entirely, it was exactly how I wanted it - I wasn’t the lady in charge, I was in charge.   
I was feeling particularly cocky after me and the lads did some control work in Brixton, I’d blood on my knuckles and none of it was mine. Unlike Jim, I prefer to see the proof of my power in stains on my clothing and skin. My Sig rested happily in my thigh holster and I was smoking the best cigarette I’d had all goddamn day. I detached my equipment and left it in the stash compartment under the seat in the Audi, threw on my Forzieri bomber and headed into our overly posh condo. Well, it didn’t suit me, it didn’t and it did. I knew I deserved this, I worked for this, worked for Jim and he was born for it somehow. Out of all that rancid beer smell and the floors he scrubbed until his knees bled to appease his old man, this was the fate he made for himself. For us.   
“Jimmy?” I called up the stairs, while I was taking them two at a time.   
“In the office.” he replied without looking up once I was already in the doorway.   
He had something in his hands - a book I didn’t recognise. Not unusual, he reads the way I do, voraciously and with unending hunger. But he was holding it like a treasure, like he doesn’t want to crease the pages wrong along the spine. There were documents in German strewn about on the mahogany, a few handwritten notes from Trudeaux about the business coming in December.   
“Whatcha got there mister?” I asked, nosing my way into his personal space.  
“Something from my time in Germany.”  
“Right, when you didn’t bother to send along a note that you were alive and well.” I sniggered, and the lightness I’d been coasting on had become leaded.   
“Yes. But, I was and so that didn’t seem necessary.” he says coolly, no snark in his voice whatsoever.My high was melting away as his icy tone seemed to creep into my bones and take all the heat out of them.   
“Well, it would’ve been fucking nice.”  
“What? Are you my babysitter?”  
“No, I’m your bodyguard and your...” I stopped dead in my tracks.   
What the fuck was I to Jim? We lived together, we slept together in all the ways you could, we were in this dangerous way together. But, what were we?  
“My what? Seb?”  
“Nothing, your partner,” I looked to my feet like a five year old caught with tempera paint on her fingers and a formerly white wall, “in business.” Was all I could manage to add lamely.   
“Oh Sebine,” he started in, all sweet and comforting “you didn’t think this was exclusive, did ya?”  
And that was it. The floor disintegrated, the oxygen level dropped and there was a shaking in my chest, below my throat as though all of my internal organs were going to vibrate until they ruptured. We’d never said it was. We didn’t make such idle promises and I had thought it was because we understood - there was no one else for us but us.   
Things come out all at once, even if you say them slowly. Even Jim MacCionaoith doesn’t control time. And so while he told me all this intricate detail, seared into my memory, I knew how the pretty story ended.   
~  
It was quiet there. Sunlight danced in stripes of dust the air illuminated, gold, flecks shimmered and disappeared in the strands. It was his sanctuary. Books, knowledge from baseboard to ceiling, along every wall in sight. It smelled like it too, like petrichor and old heavy metal inks. That place was like a church, it allowed his soul to rest. It was safety because anyone who went there was silent. The decorum of the space saved him from meddling unnecessary conversation while he laid his plans and studies.   
It was torture being away from me, he said. He thought to himself that he could have done the job from Dublin, instead he was still running things from frontlines while behind the scenes. He was pretty sure O’Connell was testing him, it was banal and he was sure now that the tiresome challenges would stop, very soon.   
Most of the work he was doing was done at night, he oversaw a group of men who packed the drugs in various layers of cellophane before stashing them in random objects to be shipped and separated, seemingly unrelated but going to several suppliers. He said he thought to himself that if O’Connell would just grease the right wheels the cart wouldn’t squeak when it went over the borders and they’d not waste so much money on clear packing tape. He’d fix that soon he told me.   
He wanted to contact me, told me that I was always on his mind. But O’Connell had been very clear on his directive about communication. So instead, he occupied his free time at the library; of which he found he had far too much of. So, he studied French in a library in Germany which was an awful long way from Dublin and me. He told me that he had for the longest time admired my mastery of the language. Like flattery was going to render the chaotic bile in my gallbladder ineffective. Of course he was a fast study, no need to repeat lessons, learning hundreds of words a day after grasping the grammatical concepts. He found himself rather enjoying committing to memory Antoine France and Voltaire. He’d thought about reciting it to me when we were nude and warm, pressed together. For all his vitriol earlier he was backpedaling marvelously.   
It amused him to no end that anyone who came across him there had no clue who he was, and so, he put on the face of stressed out Uni student studying for exams. He’d grown into himself recently - as if that weren’t completely apparent. Funny how one man’s death meant his birth. He didn’t wear a suit to the stacks. Worn out corduroys and a filched tee from my side of the closet seemed more appropriate. He just looked like your average twenty year old at a desk in the centre of the room.   
He was restless at one point, the list of verbs in front of him couldn’t calm the irritability swelling from his stomach. Frustratedly he packed his rucksack, taking a French chemistry book with him. Technical writing was the most fulfilling way to prove his translation abilities to himself. He went to leave and as he passed the front desk, an oversized cherry wood monstrosity, he was stopped by the mousy young man behind it.   
“Herr Leighton,” He called “you’re requested book has arrived.” His German accent over the English words was charming. It was no consolation to me, hearing this; hearing any of this. The librarian’s hair was neatly slicked to the side with fringe dangling down to his glasses rims, it made him look distinctly Continental European and the perfect sort of stereotypical fantasy. Part of my head wandered off to wonder what other mundane tropes Jim had a taste for in pornography, most of me didn’t want to know, and what was left didn’t want to hear the rest of his tale.   
“Danke Uwe, du bist immer gut fur mich.” Jim had replied, pulling out the charm he kept up his sleeves in spades. He was playing a character and there was no better way to practice than on unsuspecting strangers.   
“Abdenessen?” Jim offered, flashing pearly whites. And he mimicked it while giving me his story, the smile I saw was a disgusting disfiguration of the one I was used to, but it’s the same one he uses when he’s being clever with me.   
“Ah, ich weiß nicht. Spatz, oder Freitag, ja?”  
“Frietag, ja. Dinner then, I’ll pick you up at eight?”  
“Are you asking me on a date?”  
“Are you accepting?”  
“Yes, I suppose I am.”  
“Then yes, I suppose I’m asking.” From Uwe’s hands Jim took his book, labelled with a neat white strip ‘Richard Leighton’ and left.   
As he walked down the cobblestone street he lit up a cigarette, one of mine of course. The way he dropped details of me into all of this made me feel nauseous. His logic wasn’t flawed, he explained, he wasn’t Jim MacCionaoith, he was Richard Leighton, he was abroad and single and English. Besides we had never said anything about exclusivity. He was sure I was having it off with one (or more) of the guys I trained with while he was gone and he was fine with it. Dinner isn’t crossing any lines anyway he told me. Guilt and jealousy are base emotions, and Jim isn’t even mortal, so none of it applied to him at any rate.  
On the afternoon of the night he met Uwe for dinner he strolled down the street nearest his hotel and came across a shop, its windows full of interesting baubles and old cracked leather bound books.There was a brass bell that rang when he pressed the lead glass door open and entered. The man behind the till did nothing but look up and nod at him. He wandered the aisles - old train ties, typeface blocks, money clips and oversized lighters from the forties lined the shelves. He touched the tchotchkes, picked some up before moving them to new locations. He came across a collection of mostly rusted and badly tarnished blades, where beneath the rest was one shining glint and when he dug out the blade he found that it was attached to a beautiful ivory handle with flat little screw heads holding it all in place. My heart peutrified, sunk down my trunk and puddled in the ends of my toes, listening to him describe how he found ‘it’. The knife he gave me the night he came back, the one I had in my boot at that very moment, had been my little good luck charm, and now it would only ever be a souvenir from a working holiday affair.   
He told me when he saw it he instantly imagined me torturing an unknown offender, or him in a much different way. And without me knowing it I had fulfilled a fantasy the night he gave it to me and a skinned a man on command.  
“I’ll take this, thank you.” He’d said as he placed it on the counter. The man is silent, rude really, but took the Euros and handed him a receipt along with the boxed knife in a bag.   
Jim went back to the hotel he was holed up at, it was around six o’clock, there was no operation to watch over and he had two hours before he could meet Uwe. So he stretched out on his king size bed which he made a point to describe as heavenly and stared at the ceiling, my knife in his hand.   
It was easy enough to touch himself, an activity he’d relied on for years as a distraction, a means of relaxation or to just fill the time. My mind raced: Is that was all of the sex between us was? Filling the time? He told me he used to need pornography for inspiration, used to search for the most depraved thing he could find just so it would be enough for him to get off - the array of which was surprisingly large. But now that he had experience to call on and with his active imagination he didn’t really need it anymore. He lazily undid his jeans to half-mindedly stoke himself with his non-dominant hand so he could scroll with his left through pictures of me on his phone. His favourite is me, nude but wrapped in sheets, asleep. He took it our first night in our Donnybrook condo. I knew his technique but he explained it to me anyway that he pressed the heel of his hand to his thigh while he pumped with his left, then eventually he cupped his bollocks. In hope of what could develop out of the dinner date he had planned for the evening he fingered dryly at his hole. He said it was the memory of being inside me the first time that brought him off, because it was vivid and accurate like a video file on an SD Card. But nothing would ever be as good as the real thing - the real thing of course being with someone else, not me specifically, and I would just have to understand that. When he was done he peeled off my band shirt and soaked it in the sink before the semen could stain the black cotton. He’s so very considerate that way.   
He had had an epiphany, in that moment - standing in front of the mirror, cold water splashing him and his jeans dangling off his slender hips. He realised he didn’t just need to learn French, he needed to learn nine other languages, at least, to be the chameleon he has to be. He needed to leave little ‘Jimmy’ behind; and he said it like he’s throwing my pet name for him back in my face. He told me, that in the middle of everything that he was going to be the whisper of fear, he was going to be in a power vacuum and be the black hole causing it and the white hole that means you’re world ends if you leave his.   
Sentiment would hinder all of that really.   
He saw his date with Uwe as the perfect time to lash out at all ideas of emotional attachment. I would never have to know. He needed more. He would always need more than me, he told me this with a smile that lacked sincerity because it didn’t even come close to reaching his eyes.  
At eight on the nose he was where he needed to be, in a suit - which makes a good first impression and one never has to tell anyone that it is worn on the off chance business needs to be done. Uwe came from the opposite direction Jim had come, decked out in a navy blue suit with a cream bowtie. He looked lovely, his wispy brown hair was no longer slicked back and it was blowing with the breeze. Jim made extra mention that he liked Uwe’s spectators, that you can tell a lot about a man from the shoes he wears. I looked to Jim’s reflective leather loafers and wonder what they should be telling me.   
“My, my, don’t you look grand?” Uwe mused as he approached.  
“Not nearly next to a divine creature such as yourself.” Jim told me that if there is anything that’s easy to fake it’s flattery, charm and sweetness.   
Café im Literaturhaus was the perfect place to take his librarian. Really I should go sometime I’m advised. And I started thinking up a neat little arson and a quick and dirty hit when he mentioned that I ought to visit Berlin. He informed me that reservations there are hard to get, for most, but it didn’t take much to find the Maitrédee’s daughter had a recent indiscretion with the law and if he could just get a table for two it could all go away or if not it could all get so much worse. He wished it weren’t so easy. The event for the evening had something to do with discussing Christopher Marlowe’s lesser known works. Which was all well and good but Jim was in pursuit of prey and only acknowledged anything else in his senses peripherally.   
His back story developed almost without thought, he shared with me excitedly. Then he put on a voice that was not his own - it was from Aldershot of all places and he looks me dead in the eye to say:   
“Ya know Seb I love literature but after my father died my mum pushed me into maths so I could do something with my life. But it’s so nice to be here in Berlin to take in the sites and all my favourite philosophers are German so this is amazing.”   
I must’ve given him an odd face because he sloughed off the skin of Richard Leighton as quickly as he put it on to give me a cocked eyebrow glare. Then he went right back to regaling his little escapade.   
Uwe bought it - hook, line and sinker. I never would’ve,, not because I knew him but because he had too many holes in the story. But that’s the advantage of people who don’t travel, they never know.   
After their third glass of wine and ordering something with dark chocolate ganaché their conversation turned from academics and took the path towards a decidedly seductive slope.   
“I imagine you have a boy waiting for you back in England.” Uwe had almost whispered into his glass, eyes fixed on the tawny port.   
“Well, you have a better imagination than I do then.” Jim giggled at him. “Nope, no boyfriend eagerly awaiting my return to greet me upon my arrival.”  
And do you know what turned my stomach about that? It wasn’t a lie. But he should’ve said he had me, worrying more than half to death over his safety, me the girl he killed his father for, me the woman he’s been sleeping side by side with for the past year. He should’ve but he didn’t, and my venous system became full of thiols and I could feel them firming beneath the muscle. I felt like I was dying, wanted to stop him, but I wanted to know, or I didn’t. And either way it’s happened.   
Jim saw his chance to strike and took it. “Oh, but I have met this wonderfully attractive intellectual here in Berlin.”  
“Do go on.” Uwe played along.   
What he did next is one of his uncanny abilities, one of those little tricks that just throws people. Jim read him and concocted the best possible scenario to guarantee sex later. He needed to get Uwe back to his room, his mind rarely ever slowed and then was racing to put togethers all the tells Uwe had left on display.   
“Well he could easily lecture on Kafka or even St. Augustine, but prefers more racey literature.” (There had been a well worn DH Lawrence on his desk when Jim ordered his book. But he didn’t stop there, no.) “He’s single but newly so, (daily effort, rebuilding self confidence, and such nice clothes for a date are all signs of this.) although the man that let him go must be a fool (ring around his neck, so it was serious, it’s too large for his fingers so the boyfriend left Uwe - sentiment) He enjoys a good Malbec but is conceding to drink Tawny Porto with an Englishman he barely knows (his eyes had lingered on the wine list, particularly over the Argentinian section.) He’s attracted to this man as is evidenced by his body language;” here he leaned in, over the width of the table, before he made the description focus on their bodies “your legs are crossed towards me despite that I’m on the left and you’re a righty, you keep licking your lips with more frequency than you do, even when you read the good parts of Lady Chatterley's Lover at work, which is telling. And while this Englishman is continuing to ramble, you’ve leaned forward and your eyes look like saucers.”  
Jim rested his hand on Uwe’s knee with intentional pressure, enough to communicate a frission of promise. Uwe was the one who initiated the kiss - that it was obviously going to go just the way he had planned. Uwe’s lips were soft, but lacked the stale tobacco taste Jim had been used to with me, his tongue was almost too slick - but maybe that was the wine. When Uwe sighed heavily into Jim’s mouth he realised he wasn’t just going along with it, this was an act of volition and he was enjoying it. Immensely. Jim decided he was going to do this and anything else that pleased him because he could and that was that.   
Uwe pulled back, peachy cheeks and bashful eyes.  
“Uwe,” Jim gave me a face as he re-enacts their conversation. I didn’t like this Richard character but I couldn’t get him off Jim’s face. “I’m only in Berlin for two more days. I understand, but, would you come back to mine?”  
“I don’t really…”  
“It’s, that’s fine. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you - ”   
Uwe interrupted him with “Well, I don’t, normally.” And then he slid a well manicured hand up Jim’s thigh under their table.   
And it was all too easy, Jim sing-songed at me. As though I was to be amused by how simple it is for him to get what he wants. He had no intention of forcing himself on Uwe, that group of criminals we dealt with; as I well knew. But, he tried to explain to me, the ploy felt more devious somehow. Maybe because Uwe would be his first man, because he’d be the first in a string of affairs Jim would have, because he’d be a placeholder. An attractive one at that, but hardly anything more.   
In the back of a company car, on the way to Jim’s hotel they fumbled with each other. Jim wondered how much older Uwe was, educated guess said twenty-eight, and he usually wasn’t wrong. Uwe was very nearly a decade Jim’s senior, but still so very fit - tight hips, more slender than me, flat lines and hard muscle under Jim’s fingertips meant that Jim didn’t really care how old Uwe was. Jim tried not to make comparisons, apples and oranges and all that. It was with a certain amount of giddiness that he told me how fun it was to be handsy with him, with the driver glancing, glaring back at them.   
It was even better once they made it to the room, pressed against embossed wallpaper, his hands on Uwe’s hands, skin to skin as quickly as they could. The sensation of another man’s hand on his cock, of his hand wanking off another man, it was all overwhelming. He started describing to me the way Uwe’s mouth felt on him, so much bigger than mine, and he liked it rough, didn’t mind having his hair pulled and being suffocated. I’m told Uwe’s mouth was like warm honey and oh the things he did with his fingers - why don’t I ever do those things with my fingers? Jim went on about how he was rather fond of the stubble burn he woke up with the next morning and well, that’s something I just can’t provide.   
~  
“Jim, I don’t want to hear anymore.” I stood, fighting back the waves of adrenalin that were telling me just to kill him and move on.   
“Oh, but Sebby, the really good parts are coming up.” He was so proud, butter wouldn’t melt.   
“No, Jim they’re not. Jim this is when you…” my voice fucking broke and I hated my body for belying my state.   
“I’m telling you I picked that library, that librarian, so I could get a connection to his sister Mausy who’s a transport minister and in more debt than she can drown in.”   
“So what Jim?” I’m supposed to stay calm in a moment like this, restrained, but this wasn’t work, this was my life and I held nothing back.   
“So what? Seb? Are you even listening, I have my line around Trudeaux, I have my route away from O’Connell and towards his downfall. Jesus, is all you ever do so self-centred?”   
I was meant to forgive him for this little transgression because the ball was already in play. I was meant to praise him for his wit and business acumen. I didn’t.   
“Why did you fuck him?”   
“Well, that was a benefit, a big, big benefit.” he said lewdly and I could taste bile in my throat.I was on my feet and heading for the door when Jim cut me off, he’s fast, freakishly fast for someone who barely ever stoops to physical exertion.  
“Where do you think you’re going?”  
My chest felt like a Bessemer, hot and molten, if I opened my mouth nothing but scalding metal would come out and everything will be ruined. Then it dawned on me that everything was ruined already, so I spoke.   
“Am I so easily replaceable Jim?”  
“Oh Cunniff,” he paused and took my hand, there was a bit of softness in his eyes and I foolishly awaited an apology. “of course you are.”  
I am impressed with him, for all the reasons which are not love. I shocked even myself that tears did not start flowing. The exterior I had built for the job had finally, in that moment, become the interior. And though it killed me through and through, Jim would not know his power, I would not let on.  
“Then I’d like to see you try.”   
I was already down the stairs somehow, lit cigarette in my hand. I wanted Jim to rush after me but there was no sound from the second floor. Jim takes what he wants, but he certainly has never gone after things which aren’t useful, and right then, I was that useless thing putting infinite distance between us. A bungee cord used for a hanging.  
I’m not sure if I was more angry at Jim for not coming after me or at myself for thinking that he would. I dragged the ashy end of my fag along the eggshell white paint of the wall by the door as I exited. I didn’t even check if it was out, I just dropped it in the doorway.


	10. The World Greets a Soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, I was in hospital for a while.   
> Have some post relationship meltdown.

I’m not sure if I was more angry at Jim for not coming after me or at myself for thinking that he would. I dragged the ashy end of my fag along the eggshell white paint of the wall by the door as I exited. I didn’t even check if it was out, I just dropped it in the foyer.  
I got out my phone and texted Eofordhill as an act of revenge. 

[Pint?-SM]  
[Sure, where? Who else is coming?-RE]  
[Rody Bolands. No one else Hill, just us.-SM]

I was still smoking like a chimney, carving my way down the streets and avoiding the awkward glances from our neighbours as I corresponded with my mostly unknown coworker. I dropped my phone in my pocket, and an instant later dug it out again, to send a text to Jim. 

[Not coming back. You broke my heart. I hope you know I could kill you.--SM]  
[FUCK YOU JIM! YOU WANNA FUCK OTHER PEOPLE! LET’S JUST FUCK EVERYONE!-SM]  
[How could you?-SM]  
It took some revision and by the time I got to what I wanted to say I could barely see my damn phone through my angry tears anyway.  
[I’m not coming back. Don’t look for me. -SM]  
Once it was sent the weight of it really sank in. I was about a block away from the pub, sniffling like a idiot. I lit another cigarette and planned what I’d do tomorrow. But for the night, well, that night was just about getting revenge. Part of me hoped Jim stayed out of harm’s way, part of me just didn’t care anymore.  
~  
I was already at the bar having a second shot of Jameson to go with a second pint of whatever bitterness they had on special from the taps when Hill walked in. He was the type of man you look at and think he ought to be a model, he ought to be selling shitty cologne in high end fashion magazines; and you’d be right. Hill came from a family lineage most classicists have to make up if they want to sound half as posh as he tried to deny. He was the kind of man who wouldn’t have bothered looking at the soft bibliophile I’d been back home, but wasn’t that little girl anymore. The man must be an Etonian or Harrovian but I never bothered asking, I didn’t exactly invite him for intellectual stimulation. He had a puzzled look on his face when he approached me at the far end of the horseshoe shaped bar.  
“Cunniff.” it was not a question, not a greeting, he just said my name flatley.  
“Hill, or can I call you Eddie?” we don’t much use first names in our line of work. “I’ll let you call me Sebby, we can pretend we’re friends and that you aren’t terrified of why I invited you.”  
He laughed and I flagged down the bartender to ask for two more pints, a bottle of Rye and a set of shot glasses. At this point I was just trying to erase bile with beer. I walked away from the bar, which was central to everyone’s line of sight to a corner booth instead without an announcement and he followed. Kind of a smart lad, didn’t need to be told much; smart in the way a good foxhound is smart. We may as well have been working, the way he was so quiet behind me with his ramrod stiff posture and his shifting eyes.  
“So, why am I here?”  
“Do you mean am I going to kill you?”  
“Well, in the most basic terms, yes, I just don’t know what I did wrong. Level with me. I deserve that don’t I?”  
I let the question float in the air for too long and he started getting nervous, taking pulls from his beer that were clearly unnatural just so he wouldn’t have to speak again before I did. I took the opportunity to pour us each a shot. The amber liquid looked aflame in the dingy lighting of the booth, I sloshed mine around a bit as I picked it up and then nudged his towards him. My face was flat, just toying with his fear that this’ll be the last awful pub he’ll ever set foot in.  
“Yeah, alright, I’ll level with ya.” I sunk my shot for dramatic pause and then I broke into a smile “I’m just trying to get you drunk enough to fuck me.”  
He stared at me for a long moment before matching my smile. “Jesus, Moran you can’t just let a man think he’s going to his certain death and then tell him he’s gonna get some - fucks with our heads. Chrissakes.” he downed his shot and I refilled the glasses.  
“But seriously, I don’t have to be drunk.” and there went another glass in full.  
“Well, maybe I do, I mean just look at’cha.” down the hatch with mine.  
We share I don’t know how many, but the jokes get more insulting, more perverse and more sexual. I grab the bottle by the neck and wonder towards the back door. No one tried to stop me, if they didn’t work for us they knew better, so I made it into the skip with half a bottle of Rye in hand and a cigarette in the other. Hill followed after me, but this time it’s more like I want it, he’s watching my arse while I walk ahead of him, he’s considering the curves under my leather jacket. And I bet you money no where in his head was he calculating all the ways we could kill each other, he never was that good at his job.  
I stopped and turned to him, allowing as much lasciviousness to pour through my expression as drunkenly possible, I lifted the bottle and poured some into my mouth before offering it out to him and he accepted. I was still only a kid when all of this was happening, he was a full grown man, and still somehow it felt like it should have happened years ago when I was still knob-kneed. We were children stealing liquor while no one was looking. Then we were against the grimy wall and I noticed our height difference, properly for the first time; not that I hadn’t before but I started making comparisons in my head. Hill felt like a man against me, he towered over me by at least a head, probably more, and all I was thinking while he ran his greedy hands up my sides was that Jim just felt so boyish. Where Jim had been thin and wiry, Hill was solid muscle, useful muscle, he was reaction times and damage recovery, but he was still slower than me in a fight. My heart split for a moment, I wanted someone who would always be three steps ahead of me, Jim’s the only one who could do that.  
Hill was kissing up and down my neck and forcing his fingers under my bra while I was nonchalantly exhaling my smoke. It seemed to me to be like a scene from a noir film - the unaffected girl and the man who doesn’t care.  
“Doubt Duncan or Moriarty approve of fraternising.” he mumbled into my ear, and it was meant to be a joke, but I didn’t take it that way.  
I got his throat in a grip so tight that if I had the whim to I could just kill him. Push the button, pull the handle. “Don’t mention that fucking name. I don’t work for him anymore, I don’t wanna hear it, I don’t want to think it.”  
He just nodded so that his eyes agree and I let go of his trachea.  
“Fuck me, you’re hot and cold.” He croaked rubbing his throat.  
“And dangerous, but I thought you were up to it.” I pulled him down into a kiss and he went weak again, all his defenses down, I had half a mind to kill him just for being so stupid, but I didn’t.  
“C’mon.” I said as I reached into his pocket to squeeze at him and simultaneously filch his keys to his company car. It’s not brand new, not top of the line and I have a moment of pride that my Jimmy received all that with hardly an effort. Then I remembered I didn’t have a Jimmy. Hill protested mildly at being forced to ride shotgun in the car he was used to driving but he gave up when I pinned him to his seat with my hand kneading over the bulge between his thighs before I threw the thing in gear and sped off. Driving stick is not conducive to groping your coworkers, but we were drunk, it worked.  
When we got to his place I noticed we’re not alone, I had no idea the others were close enough to withstand each other as flatmates. I see Neck disappear into his room, a mop of ashy gold hair disappearing behind the snick of a door. I didn’t care what they saw, or what they talked about the next day, I wouldn’t be around for it anyway. We were not quiet, or coordinated as we fumbled through the flat in our drunken revelry, that achy feeling that we were like we were kids trying to come home past curfew hit once I realise that there are other, potentially sleeping, people in the space. I was taken aback for a minute or two when I realised that I was barely not a teenager, I was supposed to be doing this at home with a boy I’d been going steady with, I was supposed to be in uni, supposed to be a lot of things. But, how many can say they had lived as much when they’re seventy as I have before my twenty first birthday. I pretended it was a privilege to have done so much, to live the life of violence and raw power and with that turned my attention back to my bit of rough for the night.  
Hill was all teeth, and harshly gripping hands, I couldn’t decide if it was because this was how one-night stands went or because he was daft in his drunkenness. Either way it was good enough, but not as good as it was with Jim. Attachment does weird things to experience. I barely had to be a participant, Hill seemed to like doing all the work, and it was easy, like a ragdoll, easy like an empty warehouse slowly being filled with toxic waste. We didn’t think about condoms, it was a dumb oversight, but he pulled out and spent across my chest. I can’t remember caring if he were clean or not, longevity wasn’t a goal of mine that night.  
I woke up to my phone buzzing, trapped in my jeans pocket. I crawled ungainly towards the foot of the bed,and rifled through my clothing to find the glowing screen.  
[Just look what you’ve done now.-JM]  
It only took a few seconds for the panic to set in. I turned to find Hill in bed, seemingly asleep until I touch the pulse point in his neck and found no beating rhythm in my fingers save my own. Another text came in as reality washed over my face.  
[I don’t like getting my hands dirty. But I don’t like other people touching my things. There’s a car waiting for you. Hurry along now. -JM]  
I blanched, I didn’t mind hurting people, hell I even enjoyed it, but Hill didn’t deserve this. I dressed in the dark and tried not to make a sound as I left. Terrified by what all of it meant, I practically floated out of the flat and down to the street in a daze. Jim had done this himself, had snuck into the bedroom and silently taken out the man I was sleeping next to. He could have killed me as well but he didn’t, and part of my heart swelled because that meant he cared enough to want me alive. But then I was disappointed, I should’ve noticed him, I should’ve been alert enough to stop him and I wasn’t. But, we don’t really take note of ourselves when we are in a room, why would I have taken note of him when he is as much a part of me as my spleen.  
When I got to the car, I couldn’t speak; I hadn’t ever seen it before but I knew how to recognise what belonged to our company. A small gold bird decal on the diver’s lapel was enough for me. As I opened the door words started flooding out of my mouth.  
“Jim, I don’t know what the fuck you think…” then they stop when I looked to find Jim wasn’t in the backseat with me. It was Maccas, stoic and undaunted.  
He pushed a flattened palm with pills in it and a bottle of water at me “For the hangover.”  
“I don’t do hangovers.” He must’ve thought I was being sarcastic because he shoved his offerings at me again. I begrudgingly accept.  
“You’re being temporarily reassigned. I’ll explain as we go.” he leaned forward, tapped on the glass and whoever was driving shoved off the kerb.  
“Where’s Jim?”  
“He’s at the office. He’s got a lot on his plate.”  
“So what O’Connell sent you to take care of me? I don’t fucking get it. I don’t think you understand. What’s going on between Jim and I has nothing to do with the business. Now I’m sorry about Hill, but that wasn’t my hand. So if you don’t mind I’m just going call Jim and have a little chat.” I pulled my phone out and began dialing from my favourites list.  
“O’Connell’s dead. And you’ll kindly refer to Mr.Moriarty as such, you’re not even his right hand anymore, I am. And I don’t give two flying shits over what you think is going on here, but I thought you were smarter than that so try and work it out.” He snapped at me and my head spun nearly off my neck with confusion and hurt. As it turned out I was so very easily replaceable.  
I was still a little drunk from hours before, the adrenaline of the messages from Jim was wearing off but I had to try and put all the blurry and soft pieces into place alongside the jagged edges of what I didn’t understand. Before I had left, Jim said he had our French connection underwrap, which meant O’Connell was going down too. But, that would mean I walked out when he needed me. That I let our personal dispute affect our business. So now O’Connell was dead and that left Jim in charge, but it’s not Jim, it’s Moriarty now because every piece of my Jimmy is gone.  
“Right, alright then, what’s my assignment?”  
“Ever heard of the little war in Iraq?”  
“Not so little, and not our problem as far as I knew. What do drug runners and blackmailers  
have to do with it?”  
“Where, my girl, do you think we import the shit from? Iraq is littered with opium fields. But Mr. Moriarty has bigger plans. He’s sending you over, you’ve got a job to do.”  
“What I’m the fucking army guarding the poppies now?”  
“No, what he’s working on he don’t need you to help with. Here’s your whole assignment. I don’t know exactly what he’s got you doing, but don’t fuck it up. The desert is no place to die.”  
We rode in silence as I opened the folio he’d handed me, it was sealed with a garish gold embossed magpie, a symbol Jim would adopt as a calling card over the years. I read over the type written pages, glanced is more like, but I got the gist of the job. I didn’t like it, but I knew that if I turned it down Maccas would have no second thought about perforating me.  
The car came to a stop at a private hangar and Maccas got out, I followed the lead.  
He handed me an olive green rucksack as long as my torso. It had my last name stenciled onto it in black blocky letters, looked like it had been done in oil paint minutes before it was foisted over.  
“This plane will take you to London. You’ve got a flight from Heathrow tonight at 8:45. Don’t miss it. Goodbye, Moran.”  
I didn’t bother with a parting pleasantry, just picked up my pack and went. It seemed easiest. I slept on my flight to London. I waited at my gate with a bunch of other dumb sods for the flight that would take us to training and I thought that those poor bastards were better off than me, at least they volunteered; actually maybe they were worse off because they did. I made little to no conversation while we’re boarding, or on the flight. Numb. I realised I was in exile, and one that could get me killed for no good goddamned reason.  
When we arrived at camp, after a bumpy and arduous drive in a tin bus, they took roll call. It felt like primary school except we’re all handed rubber assault rifles to get used to a weight I already knew. We were issued camel and copper coloured camouflage and I felt comfortable in the battle dress once I got it on. My boots were heavy, steel toed, my laces ready for para-trooping while the rest of the feet near me were tied like school children. At least there I knew I could hold my own, if there was one thing I had no qualms about it was fighting and killing. The training was nothing compared to how hard I had pushed myself to get to where I was; seemed like a banking holiday until I was called on out of the blue.  
“Moran.” A male voice barked over the hustle and bustle of the sleeping quarters. I shot up straight from where I had been stuffing my now unnecessary personal belongings back under my cot.  
“Sir.” I retorted falling to the black line at the end of my bed and standing ramrod straight while I waited for the nameless authority figure to approach me. The sterility of the space made me feel sick, like I was really in a hospital wing. Diagnosis terminal.  
“Moran, there is an issue with your papers. Follow me.” The man before me was stocky, built like a bulldog with a face to match. He looked as if he were born in his uniform and he’d gladly die in it too.  
“Sir.” I replied again as I fell in behind him and marched my way to his office. All the while I was thinking that Jim, or someone in his little network had already bollocksed up my mission. When I entered his office he sat behind his desk and made a gesture with his hand telling me to close the door behind me. After I do I sit in the metal chair on my side of the drab brown aluminium desk and wait to be ripped a new one for impersonating a soldier.  
“So you’re Mr. Moriarty's are you?”  
“I’m what sir?”  
“C’mon knock it off with that ‘Sir’ shit, still sounds wrong to me anyway. I’m Raleigh Burke, from the Ipswich syndicate. We’ve got orderS from Mr. Moriarty to get you to the front line as soon as we can. Seems you’ve got a job to do.”  
“You’re what now? I’m sorry, I’m not sure you’ve got the right Moran.” My instinct to save Jim’s arse was still strong enough to make me suspicious of the officer across the Cold War era desk from me.  
“I get it, plausible deniability and all that. Look, few days ago we get word O’Connell’s out and there’s a new boss in town. Mr. Moriarty oversees most’a the UK now, and we’re working to help...consolidate where we can. It’s all to everyone’s benefit. I thought you were coming straight from his ranks, I was told you were a primary asset of ‘is. Thought you knew wassup.”  
“Yeah, yeah, no it’s fine. Just wanted to sort you out for a second.” I’m collected on the surface but astonished on the inside. I had no clue how far Jim’s reach went now that he’d overthrown his ringleader.  
“No worries mate. Look, tomorrow morning you’re flying out. Unfortunately all our electronic records got botched,” he says with syrupy sarcasm in his voice “so you have to take your orders by hand.” he slid a manilla folder as me and I noticed he was pressing the desk pretty hard, the pink and dark brown of his nail-beds went white under the force. When I tried to pull the file from under his hand there was a moment where he won’t relinquish it. Power play is a very dumb thing.  
“We’ve all got a lot riding on this one. Don’t ruin it, Colonel.” he said then he leaned back, allows me the paperwork as he flashes me a too toothy grin, showing me his pink gums and off white of his canines, bright against his dark black skin. When I got the folder I opened it, immediately immersed in what I was meant to accomplish.  
“Colonel? I thought I was just a grunt. I’m too young to pull it off.”  
“Not according to your papers. Make it work. The rank gives you the leeway you’ll need to pull off these hits.”  
“Yeah fine. But where’s my new uniform then? I’ll need badges and rank or no one is going to buy this.”  
“Check your foot locker when you get back. We’re all behind you on this, there aren’t many of us and you won’t know most of us by name. But we’ve got your back.”  
“Ta.” I chipped at him cheekily and stood to leave, my assumed identity tucked under my elbow.  
“May I suggest something?” He asked as though I’d take his head off.  
“What?”  
“Put some grey in your hair, you’ll look a decade older.”  
“How and where am I magically going to make that happen?”  
“Like I said, check your foot locker.”  
Later that night when everyone else was sleeping I snuck off to the bathroom and run a few carefully placed streaks through my hair. I’m careful not over do it, I may have a few new scars and a permanent scowl but I know I don’t look that old. The annoying thing is that he was right, I looked at least in my thirties by the time I'm done.I stared at myself, in the rectangular polished metal screwed to the wall as a makeshift mirror and wondered given my line of work if I’d ever even make it to see those years.  
There was a letter from Jim in amongst the orders. It didn’t survive my lighter that night and though I could tell you what it said word for word, I won’t. My response survived, you can have that for whatever it’s worth.  
In the morning Raleigh met me as I was leaving for Iraq.  
“We'll see you on the flip side, Stephens is your man out there. He's a pillock but he's got your back."  
"No worries. Can you get a message to J-Mr.Moriarty? It needs to be completely confidential, you understand?"  
"Of course."  
I hand him a letter in the manila folder I received my orders in, except I had sealed it. I give the berk a look that meant I'd kill him if anyone read it.


	11. Letters in the Sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A secret letter to Jim from Sebine before she is deployed.

Jim  
I've been trying all night to compose this response. This introduction was, in fact, written as an afterthought; an apology for taking so long to construct the things which came flooding from me upon reading your letter. I should have responded immediately to its receipt at the ungodly hour of quarter to six in the evening. Which is ridiculous, as the first thing that jumped to mind was simply to respond with the word yes, written through tears. But, I coward and faffed at what I would say, this I suppose is the product of numerous edits and redactions. This is what I can say today. 

It’s odd to me that we fight it so much. That you felt the need to say you can't reconcile the pieces. We fight it, because it can't be easy.   
I am terrified. You know me and my stubborn need to feign strength while I'm dying. On days like this, I am small. I am quiet words, I am none of my teeth and fight and fury. I need you to be gentle to me. I need you to say: today your soul does not swell to fit your skin, and that’s okay. It's okay to sometimes be tiny and shaking and afraid. Because I was afraid, am afraid.   
I told you I understood that our romance was over out of fear. Mortified that if I asked you to keep me I'd be turned away like a beggar on the streets. It was a selfish act, so of my weak character that it's alarming I still allowed it while being conscious of its nature. I lied; a weird lie. Thinking that if I could just have you out my life at all I'd believe the helpmate I burden my heart with would one day morph into the lonely companionship of forgotten fast friends; when you will always remain so much more in my heart.   
I didn't cry when it ended as I feared I would. I was high on the memory of the sweetness of your laughter, the dulcet tones of a voice I have known these long years. It broke my heart when you asked if it were alright that you still wanted me, asked permission to lust after me. It's so rare that one finds a person who wants to say those things at all, how am I to deny it? I've no weapons against such veracity, and not nearly the probity to seek them.   
I know you've done the hard thing, created a substratum so that this edifice would not crush you when it tumbled. I know I've done wrong by you, used words said in confidence as knives when I was injured. It was animal and base of me to give into what I find simplest; the instinct to turn tables that I use to my advantage comes from years upon years of needing to do so. But I don't require that with you, not now. I shouldn't have ever, and I'm sorry for it.   
I relish in the words you write, the expressions of pride and worry. You know very well I take solace in the written word and having any from you is a gift. I do not want to hold you to them, I need no more walls to find the comfort I'm seeking. If anything you're the open field I feel safe enough to sleep in under stars we can share. And here I cannot resist telling you I don't want to hold things against you, I simply want to hold you.   
I ask for friendship because I thought maybe I could have that. A thing which happens so easily among coworkers and pub mates, so free and easy it would only ever live a tenuous and anxious life between us; thinking you could be my friend while I pined secretly after you was a mistake. Thinking you'd not be doing the same was self deprecation because I'd prefer to believe I am easily unnecessary.   
We do what we do with our lives because you and I are uniquely suited. Death does not alarm us, we are neither quiescent nor swarming it its wake. We do not quail at the sight or prospect of impermanence. And so it is much easier for me to say a thing is dead. I did not become a nurse or doctor or surgeon, though my love of pathology could have lead me so, because I do not know what to do with things that are quick. How am I to comport this, knowing it is alive and well? That I could harm it with thoughtlessness or its companion over thinking?   
I think maybe you were once Pollux and I, Castor. But we are not stars, and this does not end with a mythology that people will recite for ages.   
When all of this is done, you won't know where I live, or that I’ll’ve turned my bedroom into my personalised recreation of our house in Leixlip. I'll have my paintings and writing on the walls, connected by yarn and thumbtacks, fairy lights under my bed frame, which illuminate the room and oscillate their colours because I could never choose a setting. None of this, of course, will be done on accident; after I resigned myself to never seeing you again I’ll decide to build a nest of 'you' to surround myself with.  
Since you won't know where I live or travel, and I'll be traveling more because I won’t be able to stand my own skin, I may send you postcards with no return address, or my parent's, to show you where I am, or was. I’ll never forget our D4, but maybe you’ll’ve moved.   
The distance will get longer and longer. But, you knew that already.   
So, yes, after this arduous and possibly unnecessary mental dump, yes.   
I want to allow physicality to be our only obstacle. Let useless boundaries written in rastar data codes and printed on maps at gas stations no one buys anymore be the only thing that parts us. Please, yes, let me have you in terms of hurt and pain and memories I'll only ever relay via poetry written when I am drunk. Let me have you the only way I know how, brokenly.   
You be the distance, I'll be the measure, and one day we'll discover how black holes are made among stars in the skies we share. You'll always be my white hole, a thing which I cannot escape, though I never seek the event horizon.   
~Sebby


End file.
